


the word that bids new worlds to birth

by gatsbyparty



Series: tinker tailor soldier sailor [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alien Planet, Biotic Shepard, Destroy Ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Trauma, Original Character(s), Post-Canon, Post-Game(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Reapers, Shepard Survives, Stranded, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2018-10-11 23:06:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 44,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10476582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gatsbyparty/pseuds/gatsbyparty
Summary: The Reapers are dead and with them their armies, but old enemies are looming. When a trip to investigate the relays goes terribly wrong, Shepard must find a way back to Earth to warn the galaxy again. Everyone that Commander Shepard cares about is in danger, and no one knows if she is up to the task again, least of all herself.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This work is a heavily revamped version of my previous fic 'a means to an ends and everybody's friend', because it's been....four years oops...since that fic has been updated and my writing style is too different for me to work with the old one. There is going to be some heavier content in this one-please note the suicide attempt tag. Here be lots of suicidal ideation for a lot of reasons from a very traumatized woman. This is still a Shakarian fic, but it is not set ten years after 'the road back' anymore and neither of the works mentioned are still in the continuity of this fic. They are all part of the same series for my own convenience. I hope you enjoy this. I missed the Mass Effect fandom.
> 
> The title here comes from a Rudyard Kipling poem, and this Shepard is a vanguard with the spacer background.

Shepard is in the kitchen, at the window over the sink. There is something in her hand and she is looking outside, at the stars or the long stretch of grass or the faint streetlight well down the road. Her sweatshirt sleeves are rolled up to her elbows and her pants are loose, but Garrus can see the bulge of her prosthetics halfway up each thigh. There are dishes in the sink, and soap bubbled up, and the water is running, just a bit, not anything that has to be monitored. She looks like she was doing the dishes after dinner, but now she is standing painfully, inhumanly rigid. When Garrus takes a step into the kitchen he can see there is a Lotus SMG in her hand and the muzzle is resting very comfortably against the underside of her jaw. It almost doesn't register, and then when it clicks he wants to tackle her.

“Shepard?” Garrus asks, gently, taking another quiet step. This is not a situation to startle someone in. She doesn’t jump, but then she doesn’t relax, either. She doesn’t make any reaction at all, like she's in a trance. He hopes she isn't in a trance. For one thing, he doesn't want to watch what he's reasonably sure is about to come next. For another thing, he doesn't want to be attacked out of reactive paranoia.

“Shepard?” he asks again, a bit louder, and clamps his mouth shut when he sees her shoulders tense and her stance tighten. His heart slams from systole to diastole. They are both quiet for what seems like a millenium. 

“Garrus,” Shepard says eventually. He fancies he can hear her muscles creaking.

“Shepard.”

“It’s that kind of night,” she says. "Tell me about it." She doesn’t adjust her grip on the trigger or move it away from her jaw, but she looks away from the window and meets his eyes. “You know that when the Alliance pulled out of Mars, they didn’t leave any supplies behind?”   
  
“Yes,” he says. “I know.”

“There were six survivors, out of an entire planet,” she says. She doesn’t sound upset. Her facial expression doesn’t change. The kitchen starts to smell like ozone. “Can you believe that?” 

“I know,” he says again.

“There were teeth marks, on some of the bones.”

Shepard turns back to the window. A dish shoots out of the sink and smashes into the wall not an inch from Garrus. He doesn’t move. Shepard could hit a staple from a mile away with her biotics. Millenia pass. The ozone smell fades. The sky darkens and the stars wheel and a million other things happen everywhere, as far she can see out the window and farther than that, endless, things birthing and dying and turning. She puts the gun down, next to the sink, and flips on the safety, keeping it turned to the wall. She turns the faucet higher, pulls the plug in the sink, and rinses the rest of the dishes before putting them on a towel to dry.

“Do we have any yogurt, do you know?” she asks. 

“In the...fringe?” he tries. She grins at him, and it’s a real grin even if it’s a bit off kilter. 

“I’ll check,” she says, and dries her hands on the hem of her shirt. 

“So,” Garrus says, as Shepard is rummaging through various foods he’s allergic to in the “fridge” or whatever she wants him to call it. “You’re thinking about this again?”

The rummaging noises stop. She pokes her head around the door.

“By ‘this again’ do you mean my lingering desire to blow my brains out?” she asks. She raises her eyebrows, pulls her head back into the fridge. Rustling noises fill the kitchen. “At least I could stop talking about it.”

Garrus goes to the towel by the sink and puts away the plate and the cups and forks. Shepard comes back out of the fridge holding a container. She rips it open with her teeth and scoops out some kind of paste with her tongue, then more with her fingers.

“Pudding,” she says, closing her eyes for an instant. “Oh, I’d have saved the galaxy for pudding alone.”

“Do you remember when you found me on Omega?” Garrus asks.

Shepard says something muffled, then swallows the huge mouthful of pudding with obvious efforts and says, “Yeah, of course. You looked like you were a day away from launching yourself into orbit.”

“Yeah,” he says. “That’s kind of what you look like now, Shepard. Come on. Talk to me.”

“I’m really not sure what the best course of action is here,” Shepard muses. She licks a smear of pudding off the container. “On the one hand, if I just suck it up and do it, then that’s it. All done. On the other hand? Could be anything. Not much of a competition, is it?”

“Take all the time you need,” Garrus says. “I’ve heard humans can even make decisions without a chain of command.”

“I wish that I could tell you you don’t know what it’s like,” she says. Her face is blank. Her eyes are vacant. She sets the pudding down and she’s looking at him like she has been since she came out of the fridge, the same face that he’s known since they met on the Citadel, but he can’t find Shepard anywhere in that face. “Garrus, I’m sick to my back teeth of  _ talking _ about it. I wish I was dead. I want to blow my head off. I’ve been shot before, I won’t bitch out of doing it. Talking about it isn’t going to fix anything. Talking is going to do exactly what it did during the war: absolute dick for anyone.”

Garrus lifts his hand, almost reaches out, then sets it back down at his side. He’s smart, and he knows he is, and he’s too smart to take advantage of the emotional vulnerability of someone who didn’t do it to him when they had the chance. He wants it to be comfort, and he wants to help, he desperately wants to help;  but he knows how fast these things can spiral past all recognition. 

“It doesn’t do you any good,” he says, voice thrumming hard. “If you’re-it doesn’t help. It’ll be over but you’ll be dead. It won’t do anything for you.”

Seven years since her second death; ten years since the first. Billions of dead and billions of dollars between them. She doesn’t want to fight anymore. She doesn’t want dreams anymore. She doesn't want to think about the colonists on Eden Prime, babies starving to death on Mars, the Ardat-Yakshi monastery, the woman in London who killed herself when Reaper troops got close.She doesn't want to think about Anderson, or about the Alliance asking for endless favors, even a favor to save thousands of lives, because no one else would even think of doing it when the Great Goddamn Commander Shepard was around. She doesn't want to think about being out of a coma for a month, out from under the Citadel for six weeks, and no word from her mother. Shepard picks the Locus up off the counter and snaps off the safety. This isn’t something she wants Garrus to see, but she can’t make him believe she’s serious and she can't goddamn take it anymore. She keeps her gaze trained on him, tracks his hand as he raises it again and holds her shoulder. His grip is a pressure point. 

“I’m done,” she says. Repeats it, on a great rising swell of feeling that she doesn’t recognize and doesn’t like, and then again because her voice cracked the second time and she sounds unhinged enough already. “There are things you aren’t supposed to live with.”

“Shepard-”

“No!” Shepard shrieks, that bloom of emotion bursting free, the Locus coming up, “No more favors, no more ‘do it for me’, no more sacrifices that no one else is willing to make-”

Garrus hesitates for the barest instant to consider the consequences of startling an unhinged biotic, of interfering, before he uses his grip on Shepard to pull her to him. Despite himself, he is fully aware that they’ve only been in this sort of contact once before, in another horrifying moment hours before the Collector base. The difference is that now she stands dead still. She is silent. 

The kitchen smells like ozone, and Garrus is holding the tripwire. He does not breathe, he does not blink. 

Garrus is just over a foot taller than Shepard. He does not wear armor in the house he shares with Shepard, because it has to be a place where they both feel safe. She is both significantly heavier and stronger, and she is holding a loaded firearm. She is capable of something like the detonation ability of a small nuclear warhead with the right combination of biotics, and even the weakest biotic can manipulate very tiny gravity fields very effectively. There is just the one thing on his side, and it is the cheapest shot he can imagine. 

Just as Garrus hears the faintest beginnings of the crackling noise that precedes a singularity, he sticks out his foot one way and twists his torso the other. Shepard’s cheap plastic prosthetics snap and they fall to the floor, Shepard first, with a nasty cracking sound. The singularity fizzles out as she stares at him in unmitigated horror. 

“My legs,” she says. Her voice is so small that Garrus barely hears her. “Garrus, you took my legs.”

He snaps the safety back on the Locus and spins it across the floor out of her reach. It’s an atrocious way to treat a gun, but he’d rather that than give her another opportunity to slip past. Garrus is sickened, by himself and by what’s he done and still willing to do, but he keeps her pinned by the biceps. She is still sick and exhausted and half-starved and her muscles are so taut he’s worried she might seize, but he keeps her down. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry, Shepard.”

He closes his mouth after that. He doesn’t want to vomit. Strange, that after all the things he’s seen in his time with Shepard, that he can still be affected by anything short of genocide. Shepard jerks once, twice, then contorts violently to throw Garrus aside with the stumps of her thighs. 

“Christ,” she says, stricken, blanched white. “Don’t touch me. Don’t you ever touch me again.” 

“It doesn’t matter,” he rasps, winded, flat on his back. “It doesn’t matter how any of us feel about anything, Shepard, it’s too late for that. I know you’re tired. You know I’m tired. Just think for a minute.”

“I’m sick of thinking.”

“Of all the times to be whining,” he says, “this is a really bad one to pick.”

“Christ, Garrus, come on-”

“Stop it already,” he snaps. “Think. What’s going to happen if the savior of the galaxy commits suicide?”

This, he thinks, feels almost as bad as snapping her temp prosthetics. Reminding Shepard, of all people, about duty and influence, about living up to the image. She doesn’t want to think about the war any more than he does. He wonders how he would feel if she did this to him and wants to vomit again. Garrus knows he doesn’t measure up to Shepard in a lot of ways, but this one hurts especially badly. He’s never been able to manage her surgical touch, and he can’t come close to imitating the way she helped him. 

“Okay,” she says after an age of the world, after an eternity. “Of course. There’s always the work. How could I forget.”

She sounds like there’s no moisture in her mouth, but he can work with it. 

“There’s the work, Shepard,” he says, quietly. “There’s the meaning right there. That’s what we have now. You can’t forget any of it. You just have to carry it.”

“The other part of the calculus, right? Ten billion die over here so twenty billion over there can live.”

“I’m sorry I snapped your terrible fake legs,” Garrus says. “But really, I did you a favor. Those things were tiny. You looked like you kept skipping leg workouts.”

“Leg workouts,” Shepard repeats, pushing up on her hands to look down at the little half-length thighs she has left. Garrus gets to his feet.

“Hang on, short stuff,” he says when Shepard goes to roll onto her stomach. “I’ll carry you if you want. It’s my fault.”

“By all means,” she says, sprawling back out, arms flung aside. When he lifts her she kicks him in the side. It's almost an accident.

“Ouch!”

“Sorry,” Shepard says. “Turians aren’t built for the fireman carry, I guess.”

“Make yourself comfortable,” Garrus grumbles. “Your other shitty legs are in the bathroom closet, aren’t they?”

“Yes, and they aren’t shitty.”

“Yeah, alright.”

“Listen-” Shepard starts, after she’s been deposited on the couch and the legs retrieved and Garrus is helping her fit the stumps into the gel at the top of the rickety plastic. She knows that it’ll take a while for the real prosthetics to be made and even longer for her to get into proper fighting shape to use them, but it’s ridiculous how the things don’t even hold up to moving at a run. “I won’t say that I don’t want to blow my brains out. But you’re right about there being other things to worry about right now.”

She can see him relax, swiftly and completely. It would be funny if she didn’t feel so god-awful about it. Poor bastard. Garrus is her best friend in the entire known galaxy, and she almost shoots herself in front of him. She knows none of it is his fault. Garrus did his best and he’s still doing his best. She just doesn’t know what to do with herself, with her shitty brain, without even considering Garrus, and she needs to consider Garrus. There are so many people who are gone, so many of their friends who are off helping with rebuilding.

There are entire countries to rebuild, relations to forge, appearances to make. There is her best friend, who saw things on Menae he still won’t tell her about and screams so loud at night that they both wake up but still makes coffee for them both every morning. There is herself, who spent seventy four days trapped under the ruins of the Citadel and doesn’t remember anything before, but she can still smell the bodies rotting around her. There’s the work, and there’s Garrus. She can’t think about anything else.

It doesn't matter if it's all meaningless, or that she's tired, or that she'd rather be dead than see Garrus trapped on Earth because the relays exploded, and that everyone else she loves is either dead or out of contact. There are still things to be done, and Shepard doesn't do the right thing because she wants to. Shepard does the right thing because the thought of doing anything else is unbearable.


	2. Chapter 2

Shepard’s physical therapist is, unfortunately, on time today. It’s been long enough since the amputation and enough improvement has been made that normally the PT, Ayelet Langenauer, is silent about the way that Shepard pushes herself. Recently Shepard has made some progress with Langenauer, to the extent that she’ll even say “Hello” upon arrival. Shepard is hoping to delay the firing squad as long as possible, because she knows just how well it’s going to go over that she threw a fully grown turian with her tender stumps and broke a perfectly good set of legs.

There’s no such luck with that, though, once Langenauer sees the condition of Shepard’s legs.

“Look at this!” Langenauer says immediately upon entering the living room, where Shepard is sitting on the couch, ready for the weekly torture session, and Shepard does so. Stumps and their little socks in her hands to be put on, shorts, a sweater; sounding quite honest, Shepard says, “What?”

“Look at your legs,” Langenauer says, dropping her bag and waiting for Shepard to lean back a little and lift the stumps before placing a hand on one of them. “What have you been doing? Is this residual bruising? No, don’t lie to me, Shepard, I know what stump bruising looks like.”

Shepard considers briefly playing the accent card, but she’s had too many sessions with Langenauer for her to believe that Shepard suddenly can’t understand her. The bruising from throwing Garrus is mostly faded by now, but in bright light the sickly yellow coloring is very noticeable.

“Well,” Shepard says. “The rash is clearing up.” 

Even in the best of times, with a booming galactic economy, the cost of shipping between systems can be expensive. Garrus checks the numbers his omnitool is putting out one more time before closing the extranet in disgust. He wants to soften his news, and he needs an effective bribe, but even for the savior of the galaxy he isn’t paying that many credits for a surprise. 

“I’m going to need a new set of backups,” Shepard says. “The others….had an incident.”

“If the swelling has gone down enough I’ll need to measure you for the next stage and send them on to the prosthetist, anyway. I would like to hear about this incident,” Langenauer says, “while you try out these ones with the knee joint unlocked.”

He can hear Shepard in living room-one of the better human concepts, really-lying to her physical therapist. Shepard has a knack for making anything sound true just by sheer force of personality. Out of curiosity, he shuts down his omnitool and goes into the other room, where he leans against the doorway to watch Shepard batter around a bunch of pieces of plastic or whatever it is she’s doing this week. 

“No, the garbage disposal just completely backfired and launched-um,” Shepard is saying, silent for a moment as she concentrates on pulling on the stump socks and then slipping the stumps into the prosthetics, closes her eyes at the little thrill of the current connecting, “What was I saying?-but the whole cabinet came out, practically, it’s all taped over with plastic now and the kitchen was flooded, it was disgusting. Um, how do I get back up?”

Garrus doesn’t want to laugh because he doesn’t want to distract anyone, but he can’t help himself. Shepard whips her head around and Langenauer jumps.

“What?” Shepard says. “What is so funny, Vakarian?”

“Shepard,” he says, “Look at yourself. You’re chalk white. You’re less than two feet off the ground.”

“I am two feet off the ground,” she says, stone-faced, with a peculiar tone that he knows means she’s swallowing back a bark of laughter. 

“Back on task, Shepard,” Langenauer says. Shepard eases herself up with her hands, then goes still, eyeing her newly unlocked knees. She did well enough with the stubbies, but hated them-as if she wasn’t sickened enough by losing both legs, she was a foot and a half shorter-and fine with the longer legs once she adjusted to essentially walking on stilts, but this is all kinds of something else. She flexes her legs a little to lift them and then drops them again, grunting with the effort.

“Heavy,” she says. 

“Would it be easier if I got your booster seat from the kitchen?” Garrus asks. 

Shepard shoves hard with her hands against the back of the couch, bursts upright, staggers a few steps, and then comes to a dead stop with a triumphant grin on her face.

“Get the booster seat for yourself,” she says, “so you can sit down when your legs give out from the shock.”

Garrus groans. Langenauer looks like she wishes she already left for the day.

“I can do so many things now,” Shepard says, looking wistfully off into the mid-distance. “I can put the dishes in the lower cabinets.”

“You can pick up your laundry when you drop it,” Garrus says. “Hell, you can do your own laundry.”

Shepard considers this for a moment, then turns her gaze to Langenauer. “Lock them again?”

“Two hundred years ago, you would have been walking on the stubbies for the rest of your life if you weren’t in a wheelchair,” Langenauer says, her face hard. “I don’t mean to suggest that is not an option still-” (“Absolutely not!” Shepard yelps) “-but if you are going to insist on using the full-length legs, and you plan on using the prosthetics that are currently being built for you, then you are not going to make my job even more difficult and you are not going to make relearning how to walk even more difficult for yourself.”

“Well,” Shepard says. “Alright. I am taking this seriously, you know.”

“You had better be,” Langenauer says, and there is no amusement in her voice. “You insisted on the legs, and you insisted on the utterly inconvenient and time-consuming flexing joints. It doesn’t matter that your final prosthetics will connect to your nerves. I am not doing this as a favor, Shepard. You will learn this the right way or I will walk out the door this minute.”

“Oh, doctor,” Shepard says. “I always take you seriously.”

“Lift your right leg,” Langenauer says, her face still hard. Shepard does so, and then the left, and then squats slowly, and arthritically gets back up. Langenauer kneels on the floor and runs her hand down the front of Shepard’s thigh to where the stump joins the prosthetic; she prods the rim to make sure the seal is tight, she manipulates the gel with her fingertips. Shepard knows Langenauer can’t tell if the current is actually carrying her nerve impulses unless Shepard is moving, but she wouldn’t be surprised. There’s no feeling in the prosthetic or the gel, and Shepard holds herself rigid so that Langenauer doesn’t know her reaction to the prodding. 

“Well,” Langenauer says at last. “The connection is good, and the stumps are healing nicely, despite whatever you saw fit to do with them. I suppose that we can try something else today.”

“Oh, good,” Shepard says. 

Garrus goes back into the kitchen and switches on the little electric kettle. He sets out two cups, clinking them to the counter with the sound of Shepard swearing in the distance, and puts teabags in each. He puts sugar in one and leaves the other empty, because they’ve run out of the incredibly expensive little pouch of sugar he can use, and pours the water once the switch on the kettle pops back up. He thinks, just while the tea brews, about the email he got this morning, then tosses the teabags and brings the two cups into the living room. He sets Shepard’s on the table and sits on the couch. He’s never asked, but neither Langenauer or Shepard seem to mind if he watches the sessions,and Shepard would absolutely say something. He finds it interesting, watching someone learn something they already knew how to do so well they stopped thinking about it. 

Langenauer never addresses Garrus by name-he thinks she might not be sure what sort of title is both appropriate and polite-but while she is using a recorder of some kind to analyze Shepard’s gait, she says, “I have seen some very interesting turian prosthetics.”

Garrus takes a sip of his tea. “I can’t say I know anything about them. My mother...used a wheelchair.”

He is quiet for a moment, wondering if that is the right tense, but doesn’t allow himself to think about it for too long. Plenty of people haven’t heard from their families. That doesn’t mean they’re all dead. 

“Towards the end of the war I worked with on a team composed of several species,” Langenauer says, tapping something on her recorder and then gesturing Shepard to turn around. “A few more laps, please. I almost have this. Some of them I still work with.”

“On what?” Garrus prompts, taking another sip. He is genuinely curious, on top of making conversation. Other turians had to have been stuck on Earth, too, but he hasn’t run into any. 

“What do you think?” Langenauer asks, looking up from the recorder with raised eyebrows. Garrus almost inhales his next sip, swallows hard, and decides that Langenauer was absolutely not making a joke. Langenauer returns to the recorder. “Developing better therapies for amputees. Once more, Shepard. There, thank you. Now hold still.”

“Sounds like interesting work,” Garrus says. “Not just human amputees, I assume?”

“No,” Langenauer says. “Shepard’s prosthetist and I used to work only with Alliance soldiers, and some of the others as well, but we are a diverse team. The war forced many of us to broaden our involvement. Several of us volunteer with the relay refugees, for all sorts of conditions.”

“If anyone needs the help,” Shepard muses. “I don’t suppose you’re looking for more volunteers. I have a high school education, myself, and I can put together furniture.”

She runs the recorder over Shepard’s hips and legs, then shuts it off.

“I’ll bring that to the prosthetist today,” Langenauer says. “We’ll want to make sure the prosthetics will move naturally with your gait.” To Garrus, Langenauer says, “My colleagues are naturally stressed by the circumstances, but I will pass along your interest in our work. Perhaps you and Shepard would like to come to our office, the next time I am here. It would be easier to try the new prosthetics right there, anyway.”

“Sure,” Shepard says. “Are we done for the day?”

“One more thing.”

“Goddamn it,” Shepard says. “Not the steps.”

Langenauer puts the recorder in her bag and pulls out a little two-step folding ladder. 

“Yes,” she says. “The steps. Come here.”

“I feel like a toddler,” Shepard says. “Step by step, my ass. Teach me step over step.”

Shepard gets up the stairs with only a little trouble. She’s still figuring out how high she has to lift her feet, but the steps are wide and there’s only two of them. By tapping the front of her foot into the step, she gets the knee joint to flex at the right angle, then lifts it, plants it very firmly, and hikes herself up to do it with the other foot.  It’s going back down that’s the problem.  Langenauer holds out her hand, and Shepard takes it with no hesitation. She slides one foot forward and down onto the step, then drags the other forward. Garrus can see her white-knuckling Langenauer’s hand, but Langenauer doesn’t complain. 

“Hang on,” Shepard says. She doesn’t move for a long second. Here is where she the real trouble: she can’t move her weight fast enough from the back leg to the front leg to stay balanced, and the new knees are making her nervous. Finally, furious with herself, she goes to take the step too fast, loses her balance, and narrowly manages to hit the carpet without completely tipping over.

“Mm,” Langenauer says. “Well. Be careful on a full flight of stairs or use a ramp. Many amputees who master stairs go down them very, very fast.”

“Right,” Shepard says. “Are we done for the day?”

“I will send you both an email about the office after I talk to my colleagues.”

“I commend your professional attitude,” Shepard says after Langenauer packs up and leaves. “I never, ever want to do that again.”

“It was painful to watch.”

“I never liked stairs very much even when I didn’t feel top heavy.”

“Here,” Garrus says, handing Shepard her tea and taking another sip of his.   
  
“Did we run out of the good shit, big guy?” she asks, sipping her own. “You’re making faces like I’m kicking your ankle every time you drink that.”

“I thought life was bitter,” Garrus says, scowling at the cup. 

“Well, don’t waste it,” she says, draining the rest of hers in one go. “We have to go grocery shopping and there’s like three bags left.”

Garrus takes another sip and sets his cup on the table.  He adjusts the tabs on the sides of his shirt and tugs the neckline. 

“Yes?” Shepard says.

“What?”

“You have ants in your pants.”

“What?”

“It’s an expression, never mind.”

“Right,” Garrus says. “So. Did you happen to get an email?”

“I’ve gotten a few in my day, yes.”

Garrus interfolds his fingers. “I mean this morning. From the head of the relay project.”

Shepard instantly straightens up, from sprawling low and relaxed to alert and tensed. 

“No,” she says. “Why?”

“Two of the relays are functioning,” Garrus says. “Kite’s Nest and the Apien Crest.”

“Palaven,” Shepard says. She keeps her voice tight, but she thinks Garrus hears something wobble. “Palaven is in the Apien Crest, isn’t it?”

Palaven, she is saying, but she is picturing Menae, the way she wanted to vomit the whole time they were there. She still saw Earth, Reapers landing as she fled; the Primarch was dead, Adrien Victus out of reach, no one willing to help Earth until they were helped first. She was bent under the weight of it all, already, so early in the war, before she had any idea of the things she would see, but so ready for the fight, so assured of victory. Garrus, of course, seeing Garrus again for the first time since destroying Bahak, when she already had barely spoken to him in days. She was so uncomfortable, so stiff, and he talked to her like it was just that morning she left.

She wonders what Menae looks like now, if all the bodies have been buried.

They haven’t, on Earth. 

“Yes,” Garrus says. “And I called my parents and my sister and no one answered. But if the relay is open-”

“You can go look,” Shepard says. “You can find out what happened.”

“Don’t-” Garrus starts, then stops.

“What?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth,” he says. “You sound-nevermind. It doesn’t mean I’m going to pack up and go in the morning.”

“No,” Shepard says. “I’m going to get something to eat.”

She goes into the kitchen, rinses out her cup and leaves it in the sink. If the relays are open, Garrus can go home to find out what happened to his family and Shepard can have a house to herself. There is something sour in the idea, a little thing like a plum seed that’s been sitting in her gut for years and gone bad. She feels a multitude of things, none of them useful. It’s his family. For all either of them know, they’ve all been dead for months. 

Shepard hasn’t heard from her mother in months, but there's no point in thinking about it. 

She changes her shorts for sweatpants and goes back into the living room. Garrus is nowhere to be seen. She sits on the edge of the couch, eases her stumps out of the prosthetics, and scoots back into the cushion. Leaning the prosthetics against the couch, she turns on the tv and flips through the movie listings before settling on some cheesy old romance. 

“You know,” she says loudly enough for Garrus to hear if he’s nearby, “I used to whine that there was nothing on tv when I was a kid, but I had no idea how good we had it. Now there’s  _ really _ nothing on tv.”

“I’ve seen almost every episode of  _ The Young and the Enlisted _ ,” Garrus says, joining her on the couch with a plate of some kind of food she has no interest in getting anywhere near. It looks like meat, but it’s silver. “I watched it with my mom when I was really little. The last seventeen seasons are on the extranet. I keep waiting for Faelad and Lucvus to just admit they’re in love.”

“I thought you were using my account,” Shepard says, tucking her stumps up against her butt. “I knew I wasn’t the one watching two-star turian soap operas.”

“I wouldn’t expect an alien to understand the depth and nuance of the storyline,” Garrus says through a mouthful of food. “Faelad’s complicated family life, Lucvus’ betrothal and then his deployment on a colony world-”

“Depth and nuance! Faelad’s ex-boyfriend becomes the goddamn Primarch and he deploys Lucvus to get rid of him so he can win Faelad back, that’s hardly deep-”

“For one thing, there are serious sociopolitical ramifications to Faelad having a relationship with the Primarch and it’s an excellent commentary on the state of the Hierarchy,” Garrus says, chewing ferociously on his food. “For another thing, you do watch it, you damned liar!”

“I have one season left,” Shepard says with a shit-eating grin. 

“What the hell, Shepard,” Garrus says. “Why didn’t you just watch it with me?”

“Would you tell your roommate that you watch an alien soap opera for the explicit sex scenes?” Shepard asks. 

“Well, no,” Garrus says, hoping Shepard somehow has no idea what he looks like when he’s the tiniest bit aroused. There are some extremely explicit scenes. He knows she’s attracted to turians but-well. No point in that line of thought.  “Intriguing, Shepard.”

“And I suppose you only watch it for the riveting sociopolitical commentary,” Shepard says. 

“Obviously not,” Garrus says. “I watch it because I’m a romantic at heart. And Faelad’s actress starred in many of my dreams.” 

Shepard laughs so hard she starts squirming, another bizarre human phenomenon, but one that Garrus is fond of in Shepard’s case, He laughs too, and almost chokes on his lunch. 

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to talk with your mouth full?” Shepard asks, rosy with laughter. Garrus grins back. He doesn’t want to use a word like adorable in reference to the terrifying, almost mythological Shepard, but: she’s both adorable and terrifying, and it’s both upsetting and attractive.

“Garrus,” she says when she’s breathing normally again, “I’m sorry for how I treated you after the Collector base. That wasn’t-”

“Shepard,” he says, helpless, maybe a little afraid. “Don’t worry about it.”

“No,” she says. “I mean it. It wasn’t right. I wasn’t being honest.”

“Oh,” Garrus says. “Sure. Can I just...go….this way…”

“Garrus,” Shepard says. “You’re still sitting down.”

“Of course,” Garrus says. He gets to his feet. “I’m just going to go wash this. And run some errands. We can talk about this later?”

“Yeah,” Shepard says. “If you want.” 

Garrus beats feet out of the living room. She hears the faucet and then the door. She turns her shitty old movie up. This is what she gets for bringing that up after so long.Thinking of Menae always gets her all gloomy about having sex with a man and then booting him out of her cabin without so much as asking if he enjoyed himself. She guesses that sometimes you get to talk it out, sometimes you go to prison to be tried for three hundred thousand counts of murder before you get a chance.

No wonder he bolted, she thinks. Who wouldn’t want their openly suicidal former superior to awkwardly try to apologize for a minor incident that feels like a lifetime ago while you’re eating lunch? 

“Phenomenal timing, as always,” she says out loud. She’s rarely alone. She and Garrus share the house because she is disabled and he’s stranded on an alien planet and everyone else that either of them trusts is dead or busy with the usual post-war things. Any other time she’s spent this much time with another person she wanted to murder them inside of a week. Garrus is hardly a restful person to be around, but they do click like few people she’s met before. “Good job, Shepard. Drop that shit apology on him right when he’s thinking about whether or not his mother is dead and how he hasn’t even bothered to go looking. Keep making it about yourself, you vain asshole.”

Shepard stretches out on the couch and rolls onto her side to watch the movie. She’s seen this one before. Maybe she’ll take a nap and have an aneurysm. At least, she thinks as she pulls a blanket off the back of the couch to wrap herself in, you can’t fuck something up anymore than she already did when it happened in the first place. 

“Errands,” Garrus mutters. The shuttle isn’t running in this part of town just yet, so he’s walking, alone in the wet mist without a jacket, for no reason, because he bolted from his own house like a child who knows he’s about to get a talking to. He wants to talk about it. He really wants to talk about it. For one thing, what wasn’t she being honest about? He considers this, in light of Shepard’s revelation about her taste in pornographic soap opera episodes, and boxes up the entire idea to come back to later, if he has time. The relay. He needs to talk to her about the relay, first, and find out why she’s so upset at the idea. 

“I thought you’d want to go with me, you love adventures,” he attempts, then tightens his mandibles to his jaws in disgust. Spirits, calling it an adventure. 

After a few laps around the block, Garrus is uncomfortably wet from the mist and the neighbors are looking even more suspicious than usual, so he goes back to the house. Seeing that Shepard is asleep, he settles himself on the other end of the couch and pulls up the extranet on his omnitool. Six hundred credits, eight hundred credits, three hundred credits. Damn inflation. It’s bad enough that he’s looking for something to dress up Shepard’s husk head. It has sunglasses now, but if Shepard’s going to keep toting it everywhere it needs some kind of bag or a muzzle. 

He’d left it in Shepard’s cabin on the  _ Normandy _ when they came back to Earth after the relays shut down, but some Alliance tech felt he had to do a favor. 

He adjusts his position a little on the couch. Almost none of the furniture in the house is comfortable for him, but at least the couch has a low back so it doesn’t force him to sit bent over. He keeps looking for a while, as the light outside darkens and the movies switch over to evening news. 

Garrus wonders, when Shepard rolls violently onto her back, if this is what domesticity could be like. The vids didn’t have much of that, and what he did see isn’t really applicable-Shepard has no feet to put under his leg, for example.  There aren’t any parks around, either, so no picnic. There’s foods he can eat, but some of them make him sick even with dextro proteins-most sugars, for one-and others are so bizarre and foreign that he wouldn’t touch them with a ten foot pole. No dinner date, either.

A working relay to a dextro system means Garrus won’t be living off of breads and candy and hoarded _Normandy_ rations. Small miracles. He cheers up at the thought of protein. 

Shepard sits up and stares at him. Her hair is flat on one side and sticking up on the other.    


“Let’s go to Palaven,” she says. “Soon as there’s a ship that’ll take us and I have my legs.”

“Oh,” Garrus says. “That was easy.”

“Your parents, your sister,” she says. “You have to know.”

“You’ll come?” he asks.

She blinks, rubs her eyes with the base of her palms. “Shit, yeah, Garrus. If there’s bad news you shouldn’t have to be alone.”

“Okay,” Garrus says. “That’s good.”

  
  
  
  
  
  



	3. Chapter 3

“Huh,” Shepard says, sitting in a comfortable chair in Ayelet Langenauer’s office. The room is clean and spare, with functional, undecorated furniture and a flowering cactus in a pot on the neat desk. After months of intensive rehabilitation and therapy, she is at last looking at a pair of finished prosthetic legs. They are just as spare and functional as the office, from the gel that cushions her stumps and uses little nodes to carry nerve impulses to the laser-cut joint mechanics. 

“They can be painted, once you’ve adjusted,” Langenauer says. “Chromed, if you like. Enamel. There are several options.”

"What if the stumps change size again?” Shepard asks.

“The gel can self-adjust to a range of variations, but if you look here-” Langenauer touches a panel on the side, “the depth and width of the gel can be changed, and the rim of the leg can be narrowed or widened. Unless there are very drastic changes, these will last you for some time. Adjustment for those drastic changes would be...ah, extensive. Complicated.”

“I see,” Shepard says. “I suppose I won't be going to a buffet anytime soon.” 

“This is a kind of titanium-ceramic composite,” Langenauer says, moving to the outside of the legs. “I do not know exactly what, but it is hypoallergenic and nearly indestructible.”

“That’s useful,” Garrus says from another chair, sounding satisfied, and laughs when Shepard gives him a dirty look. 

“The toes flex,” Langenauer continues, “The joints and feet are padded with shock absorbers, so it is not going to kill you to jump off a counter, but I still would not want to feel that jolt, myself. The flex and movement of the foot itself is not as fluid as it could be, but it is still very good.”

“What about grip?” Shepard asks. She thinks there might be approval in Langenauer’s eyes. 

“The grip on the feet is not bad, either,” she says. “On dry floor-tile or hardwood-I would even say it is excellent, but if the floor is wet or muddy it is alright at best. That is one of the few areas we are able to improve on nature, but as you preferred we prioritize ease of movement, there was a trade-off,”

_ What else can one expect from the ignorant layman?  _ her tone implies. 

“Well,” Shepard says. “Can I try them?”

“Of course,” Langenauer says, and helps Shepard through the process of securing the legs and connecting them to her nervous system. Once the little shock of connection passes, Shepard uses Langenauer’s hand to stand and takes a few steps. Certainly, there is ease of movement, and the bend of the knee and ankle joints is much more simple and natural than with her interim prosthetics. The legs are light, too, maybe a little heavier than she remembers her real legs being. 

“What do you think?” a new voice says from the doorway. Shepard turns and notices dimly, with pleasure, that she doesn’t stagger or lose her balance at all.

  
“Stabilizers are working well,” a turian says as she steps into the office and shuts the door. “Graene Langenauer, nice to meet you. There’s a lot of proprietary tech in there. Some of it I came up with just for you.”

“Langenauer?” Shepard repeats. 

“Yes, but call me Graene,” Graene says. “So tell me, what do you think?”

“I’m satisfied,” Shepard says. Well, she supposes, a wife is a colleague. Obvious, in retrospect, that there was at least one human married to an alien still, somewhere. “The servos in the left knee feel the tiniest bit out of sync.”

“Yeah, might be,” Graene says. “Like I said, some brand new stuff in there. Might just be warm-up jitters.”

Shepard bends her legs to flex the knee joints again, then bends one side at a time in deep lunges.

“Definitely off,” she says. 

“Redesigned from a turian model,” Graene says, tilting her head. The cam beside her eye swivels and telescopes out. After a few seconds, it beeps and slides back in and Graene nods. “My equipment wasn’t really calibrated for a human’s proportions, looks like it’s a half-millimeter out of place. Mind letting me see it?”

Shepard sits again and removes the leg in question. Graene crouches beside it and digs at the knee joint with a tiny curved tool and then helps Shepard put it back on. When Shepard tests the leg this time, she says “Looks all good now.”

“Can you jump?” Garrus asks. 

“How high?” Shepard asks.

Garrus shrugs lazily, as if to say it doesn’t matter to him.

Shepard jumps. 

Garrus nods. She can see the calculation hidden in his expression, but she doesn’t say anything, and she doubts either of the Langenauers notice. Whatever he’s planning is bound to be good. All of Garrus’ creativity has been festering in that head for months.

Shepard runs a hand down the smooth composite of her new legs and finally cracks a grin at Langenauer and then at Graene. 

“I’m Commander Shepard,” she says, “and this is my favorite prosthetist and physical therapist’s office on Earth.”

Garrus snorts. 

The grand, ringing cadence of that particular Commander Shepard voice does fall a bit flat in an office. 

“They will hold up to armor, as well,” Graene says, steadily meeting Shepard’s eyes despite what Shepard can only imagine is a horrible expression. 

“That won’t be necessary,” Shepard says.

“You never know.”

“No,” Shepard says. “It won’t be necessary.”

“None of us can know what will come,” Ayelet says calmly. “They are more bulletproof than you might expect. It is an orbital shuttle material. Very interesting to work with. We had to-”

“Oh, Ayelet, don’t,” Graene says. “They don’t care about the interesting technical bits. Look at poor Shepard. She’s all glazed over.”

“I had a question,” Garrus says. He is leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and he looks earnest. Shepard isn’t fooled, but she is relieved. “I assume you’re both in contact with the team working on the relay project.”

“Yes,” Ayelet says. “Is this about the two relays?”

Shepard had gotten the email the night before last, with apologies for the delay, but as the news was being sent out in batches to those concerned, it was unavoidable. It went on further to note, very politely, that as there was still so much uncertainty about Council space and who would be in charge of what, that no one in the project was sure who was still a Spectre, and indeed what Spectres might still be alive and if not, their replacements, and if she would please pass the information along to any contacts that she might have who would also be concerned.

Her response had said, not as politely, that she was retired and would not be passing the news along to anyone, as they were all dead. There was no response to that one. She shifts her weight from one hip to the other. 

“Garrus,” she says, “I thought you weren’t going to bring that up just yet.”

“Why bother? We’re all right here,” Garrus says. “Look, the point is, we’re going to Palaven and we need a ship.”

Implied, Shepard notes, is  _ from one turian to another _ . Before either of the Langenauers can say anything, she adds, “We need to keep it quiet.”

“Personal business,” Garrus says, commendably steady. Not, Shepard thinks, that he’s ever  _ not _ been commendably steady. The Alliance, she knows already, would be willing to give whatever they might need, within reason. The cost of that help wouldn’t be much up front, but it would open the door to more favors, and Shepard knows where that leads. Everyone knows she’s alive, but very few people know where she is.

It’s peacetime. Commander Shepard is retired. She’s got no problem being a propaganda cow, but she isn’t going to be milked by the Alliance when letting herself live is more than sufficient.

That, and getting the Alliance involved would bring more contact with the old crew, and Garrus has been very explicit that he doesn’t want any of them to be part of this. Shepard thinks he’s just avoiding more witnesses to any potential grief, but she doesn’t mind. As much as she misses everyone-as important as it is to keep around everyone who is still able to be-Shepard is conscious of her image, and Garrus is the only one that’s seen just how unstable that image is. It’s under control, and when people know things like that about someone they care about, they want to help. 

Shepard doesn’t need any more help.

“Conveniently,” Ayelet says, “my wife and I have been invited to take part in the first return vessel experiment.”

“Experiment?” Garrus repeats.

“You have, but I haven’t?” Shepard demands.

“Yes,” Ayelet says, narrowing her eyes. “Experiment, because we can’t be sure the other side is open, and yes, we have and you have not, because we are trained personnel relevant to what the expected situation is.”

And, naturally, no one needs a soldier less than in peacetime. 

“The relay can’t only have one side open,” Garrus says. “That’s not how they work.”

“An error of phrasing,” Ayelet says. “I do not understand the explanation given by the relay project. I am not a scientist.”

“It would have to be open on both sides if it’s working,” Garrus says.

“And if it’s working then why hasn’t anything come out of it?” Graene asks. “If you’re looking for a guarantee, wait until this ship comes back and you find out if it worked or not.”

Shepard folds her hands together, deferring to Garrus.

“Alright,” he says, doing something unfamiliar with his mandibles that shows the gaps in his cheeks. “Alright. Can you-is there a way-”

“Why?” Graene says.

“Why do you think?” he asks, the double tones of his voice splitting into even further registers. “What possible reason could I have for wanting to go back to Palaven?” 

“Forgive me,” Graene says. “Of course.”

“Yeah,” Garrus says. “Of course.”

“I will take care of it,” Ayelet says. “Not, you understand, out of pity for your friend, Shepard.”

 

She doesn’t clarify why, and after a discussion of the details, the appointment ends and Shepard is free to take her new legs home. She spends the ride home thinking about the black amusement of reducing all the years of complications and adventures and everything else all balled up in her time with Garrus to ‘friend’. Not even ‘comrade’ or ‘subordinate’.

“Well?” Shepard asks once they’re back at the house and she’s begun making lunch for the two of them. 

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I know that look, Garrus.”

“Those things you used to wear around the  _ Normandy _ , what are those called?”

“Socks?”

“Adhesive socks,” Garrus says, thinks it over, “no, traction socks, for the feet. Tighten up that left joint, you can still see it catching. Find out how well the composite holds up to radiation and fine tune that, that one’s big. Waterproofing.”

“I don’t know why you don’t just use the translator, but your English really is excellent, Garrus,” Shepard says, setting the plates on the table and joining him to eat. Her plate has a far larger portion, but she eats it before he's even started his. “Sorry, was that condescending?”

“A little,” Garrus says, “but that’s fine. Thanks. I’ve had a lot of practice.”

“Would you teach me some turian, while we’re going about all this?” she asks, waving vaguely at the air to indicate ‘all this’. 

“Turian,” Garrus repeats. “Come on, Shepard, that’s like asking me to teach you human.”

“Alright, alright, forgive the ignorant human,” Shepard says, rolling her eyes. Garrus chuckles.

“I was wondering if you’d ask me. I can teach you a couple different languages we might encounter, but I don’t know how useful any of it’ll be. Or how much you’ll actually be able to say.”

“That point I’ll give you,” she says. “But your English sounds pretty good. I might be able to manage.”

“I mean if you’ll be able to actually retain and understand it,” he says, giving her a sidelong look while taking a bite of food.

“Lord,” Shepard says, turning her palms and face skyward, “help me walk in your ways, and give me patience with the pampered ones who know not what they do.”

“Pampered?” he repeats.

Without changing her reverent pose, Shepard opens one eye to give him a nasty stare, and then closes it again. Garrus keeps eating. Eventually, she puts her hands down and starts eating. Far be it from him to nitpick a postulant.

He considers pointing out the time investment, too, but Shepard picks up new things like other people might pick something up off a table. 

“Anything else?” Shepard asks.

“Higher heels,” Garrus says promptly. “Like your fancy shoes. Not that there’s much leg to show off.”

“No explosives?” Shepard asks, once she stops laughing.

“Don’t be absurd,” Garrus says. “Then how would you walk away from the explosion?”

Shepard is startled into a loud bark of laughter, and claps both hands over her mouth. Garrus grins, absurdly pleased. 

“Why do you do that?” she asks abruptly, tilting her head.

“Do what?” Garrus asks.

“With your mandibles going out, like this,” Shepard says, demonstrating what she means with her hands against her face. “Like….like if you were smiling and your cheeks were pushed up? Or is it like an aggression response?”

“Ah,” Garrus says, startled. He is very careful to keep his mandibles against his face. Shepard doesn’t need to know he’s embarrassed. 

“Are you making fun of me when you do it?” Shepard asks, sounding a little suspicious. 

“What makes you say that?”

“I’ve never seen another turian smile, only you,” Shepard says. “Is it mimicry or are you being polite?”

“I’m not mocking you,” he says, only a little stiffly. “Or either of those.”

“You don’t have cheeks, Garrus,” Shepard says. “Come on. Tell me.”

“I can’t believe you don’t know how to drive,” he says. “I mean, I can, because I remember the Mako, but I feel like a car should be easier. It’s more your size.”

“I’ve never lived on a planet until this year, “ Shepard says, scowling. “When would I have learned to drive? Garrus! When did you learn to smile? Am I the only one you do it to?”

Garrus shifts awkwardly in his seat, then picks up his plate. 

“I’m going to go clean up,” he says.

Shepard’s eyebrows draw together. He’s priding himself on a clean getaway when he hears metal clicking over the tile and realizes he’s been followed.

“Garrus,” Shepard sing-songs.

Garrus turns around. If he wasn’t two feet taller than Shepard he might feel cornered. She’s got a look on her face that borders on taunting, but this is a little past a joke on his part. Maybe it’s his own expression, but she visibly softens. 

“Don’t,” she says. “C’mon. I like it when you smile at me.”

“It’s a social skill,” he says, glad that he can’t flush. “A useful one, when I’m stuck on a planet full of primates.”

Shepard pats him on the upper arm.

“Well, if we’re going to be sticking to primate social cues, you’re looking really uncomfortable, buddy.”

“Oh, alright,” Garrus says. 

Shepard clasps her hands together and beams like a toddler finally being given a snack. 

“Nevermind,” he says, sticking his plate in the sink.

“Garrus!”

“Shepard!” he says. “It’s embarrassing. Please.”

“Just this once,” she wheedles. “When do I ever ask for anything?”

“That one we’ll skip for today,” Garrus says. “Fine. Lots of turians smile, by the way, you racist. You like it when I do. That’s all. There’s the big secret, Shepard.”

“Oh,” Shepard says. Her voice is neutral. 

He shifts his weight, lowering his mandibles. “You don’t react when I do this. Understandable. It’s not one of your cues, it doesn’t get a response.” He pulls his mandibles up and out, as close as he gets to a smile. “This, you do. It’s pretty close. The teeth, maybe, a little weird looking, but it’s close. It gets a response.”

“Oh,” Shepard says again. 

“I’m not an expert on humans,” Garrus says, indicating himself with his hands as if Shepard might have forgotten about his leg structure or mandibles or the long pincers of his talons. “You guys spend  _ way _ more time worrying about what’s on each other’s faces. And I, I might as well do things in a way that makes sense to your brain. Because I remember how you looked at me, the first couple of times on the Citadel.”

“Oh,” Shepard repeats. “Garrus. I didn’t...know you saw that.”

“I didn’t, then,” Garrus says. In for a penny, in for a pound. “I’m always surrounded by humans now. I’m better at it seeing it and I know what you look like when you’re afraid. And disgusted.”

“Garrus, I wasn’t disgusted,” she says, still in that awful, awful neutral voice. “I was afraid, yes, I was very jumpy around aliens despite my best efforts, and there’s the First Contact War, and turians are  _ big _ , all of you are. And then there you are, and you’re an alien, and sometimes, sometimes with aliens it’s like when you see something gross and wet under a rock and you, you just flinch from it, and you’re so much bigger than I am, and I used to be two inches taller, no thanks to Cerberus.”

“Something gross and wet,” Garrus repeats. “Thanks.”

“That wasn’t it,” Shepard says, standing quite still, not making eye contact. “That definitely wasn’t it, I just mean it’s happened, for me, from the back of my brain somewhere. Garrus, I don’t know how, but you confused disgust with attraction.”

“What,” Garrus says. “No. I can tell the difference.”

“No,” Shepard says. “Apparently you can’t.”

“Shepard, you looked like you wanted to crawl out of your skin,” he says. Not unlike she does now, actually, which does sound appealing. He’s not liking this subject much himself. “And I don’t mean into mine, either. I’ve seen humans being attracted and you’ve never looked at me like that. Even, you know, the blowing off steam.”

“What,” Shepard says, finally making eye contact. Garrus is unsurprised to see her stay statue-still and empty-faced. 

“It’s fine,” he says. “Stress makes people do strange things. I get it. Alien. Gross and wet.”

“No,” Shepard says. “Stop that. I might not imitate your body language, but you’re not the only one who can read facial expressions. It wasn’t stress for either of us, and it was my suggestion. Don’t confirm some misunderstanding of a situation when it isn’t what I said at all.”

“Sure, Shepard,” Garrus says. “It’s in the past. And  _ you  _ asked.”

“Garrus, I’m not pandering to your ego here, I mean it,” Shepard says. “How many turians have I ever brought back to the ship, or talked to at a bar? Aliens. People in general. Not counting Kaidan.”

“That isn’t the point.”

“Yes, it’s the fucking point,” Shepard says. “Would you listen to what I’m saying and not what you think I mean?”

“Shepard,” he says, letting a little of his desperation into his voice, anything to get her to ease off and drop the subject. “What else do you want from me? I answered the question.”

“Fine,” she says. “No, you didn’t. Not completely. Why am I the one you do it to, Garrus?”

“I don’t want you to be afraid of me again, and I know how unlikely that is, but it’s a habit,” he says, closing his eyes. “There you go, Shepard. You were afraid of me, and now I bend over backwards to make sure you never are again. Is that thorough enough for you?”

“Oh,” Shepard says. She can tell her face is chalk white. She’s really got a knack for opening a can of worms. She isn’t proud of herself for it, but like a coward, she flees. 

Shepard’s bed is a mattress on the floor, but a nice one, big and comfortable, and neatly made up with blankets and pillows. Most importantly, it’s easier for her to get into without help than a regular bed, and with her legs off she can almost vanish under a heap of fabric. 

Oh, hell. Fleeing the scene like a goddamn child. As if her own curiosity hadn’t started the issue in the first place, even way back in the very first place when she’d looked at Garrus and immediately thought  _ God have mercy on me if what I’m doing is a sin _ and something had clearly gone terribly awry with that particular prayer, because God has had no mercy on Shepard in her entire life. Wanting to have sex with an alien isn’t an explicit sin, but surely it’s implied somewhere? She has a terrible vision of some ancient scribe trying to translate whatever mitzvah or commandment said  _ Thou shalt not leave the planet and try to have sex with the first thing that’s capable of verbal consent; nor shall you decide that a man in uniform is a fine thing regardless of species, because you should not be thinking that a man in uniform is a fine thing when it leads to contemplation of what sort of bits an alien may have to put to use  _ and just scratching the whole thing out in confusion.

And now, she learns, he had no idea, and still has no idea, and doesn’t believe her. Incredible, the interspecies communication boundaries that have yet to be broken. She mourns, for just the briefest moment, that young, earnest Garrus.

After she spends some time musing in a dramatic fashion, there is a tiny knock on the door.

“Come in,” she says, after a pause, deciding it’s best to get it over with. Garrus comes in and sits on the floor, carefully arranging himself. 

“Want to watch another episode of  _ The Young and the Enlisted _ ?” he asks. “Might as well fit in what we can before we go.”

“Okay,” Shepard says. “I gotta put on my legs.”

“I can,” Garrus starts, pauses, says, “I can carry you, if that’s easier.”

“Okay,” Shepard says, and he does so. She doesn’t curl into him, because she isn’t a complete sap, but she doesn’t stay rigid, either. They settle on opposite sides of the couch, and Garrus pulls up the show on the tv with his omnitool.

“Garrus,” Shepard says without looking away from Faelad learn that Lucvus has been deployed.

“Shepard.”

“You don’t have to try and be like a human for me, I’m not scared of you,” she says. “But I do like it when you smile at me.”

“Alright,” Garrus says. “Shepard.”

“Garrus.”

“You’ve stuck with me through a lot of bad shit,” he says. “Sidonis. C-Sec. The Collectors. Reapers. Javik.”

“Yes,” Shepard says. 

“So I’m still not going to let you suck-start a shotgun,” he says.

“Mm,” Shepard says. “Well. How honest do you want me to be?”

“Reasonably,” Garrus says.

“Nothing to worry about until after all this is over and you know one way or another,” Shepard says. She doesn't even need to think about it. She wouldn't leave Garrus to deal with any of this alone, regardless of the fact that she's feeling vastly improved lately. It's always a relief when it happens, but eventually she's always back to seeing death as the release, the end to all the mindnumbing bullshit and fear, knowing she can make that decision and make it final, at any time, for any reason. Shepard is not an overly pessimistic woman, despite the things she's survived, but the promised land sure as hell isn't coming in this life.

“Are humans normally this self-aware about this sort of thing?”

“I don’t know,” Shepard says. “Does it matter? I can deal with it for that long at least.”

“Alright,” Garrus says. “I’ll make a note to bring it up later, then.”

The Langenauers work fast, if obscurely; within the week, Shepard and Garrus are bundled onto the tiny expedition ship in the dead of night and six hours after that they’re headed for the relay on in-system drive. They’ve spent most the time in between reviewing basic Qotu, Garrus’ first language and one of the three most common in the Hierarchy. Shepard wouldn’t say she enjoys it, but it’s the first time she’s ever really had to cut her teeth on a new language, and the novelty makes up for the homonyms. They pass over the written form once and then Shepard flatly refuses to work on that anytime soon.

(“ _ U tàj _ ,” Garrus says, starting with an Oo, “that’s mine or my. And that same sound for  _ u _ is I, but me is  _ ul _ .”

“Okay,” Shepard says. “U tàj.”

“ _ U tàj _ ,” Garrus continues, starting with an Ah, “is yours.  _ U _ like that is you, but accusative you is more like  _ un _ .”

“Garrus,” Shepard says with her fingers folded neatly in her lap. “I don’t know what an accusative is, and I think you made it up.”)

There are a few types of scientists on board, the pilot, the Langenauers, and a couple of other assorted potentially useful people, not including Garrus and Shepard. It’s uncomfortable not being in command or knowing what’s going on, but luckily the trip to Palaven should only be a couple of days. In the middle of third shift, when no one is awake to witness, Shepard stockpiles rations in the miniscule expedition shuttle. She doesn’t expect to have to bail out, but there’s no sense in taking the chance.

Slowly, and all too quickly, the relay approaches. Shepard sits in the mess with a large bowl of pasta once preparations for the jump begin. She has no interest in watching. There is the low, faint whine at the very edge of hearing, a heavy drag back like all the colors are smearing, the smallest fraction of a second where everything flips inside out, and then reality slams hard back into place. Shepard finishes her pasta, gets to her feet, and makes her way to the bridge where everyone else is.

“Felt like a regular relay jump,” she says as she joins the small crowd, noticing their faces. “What did I miss?”

The pilot points dead ahead, where Shepard sees the expected planet whirling around a sun. “Perfect jump, coordinates were dead on, minimal engine strain, systems green. Only thing is, that’s not Palaven. We went in like a peach, but I don’t know where we came out. This system isn’t in any of my charts, and I’ve traveled most of the Milky Way.”

“If you did your job correctly you would know where we are,” one of the scientists says, red-faced.

“The relay didn’t connect,” Graene says, waving to shush the scientist. “I don’t know the technical term. Nothing to do with our dear competent pilot, but this certainly is not Palaven.”

“I’m going down to check it out,” Shepard says instantly, eyes drawn to the planet, the little bubble of color and life. She can’t look away from it. “You people do whatever you want, figure out how we got here or something, but I’m betting there’s a reason this system and not another.”

“Don’t be ridiculous-” she hears someone start in, until Garrus grunts loudly enough to shut them up.

“Commander Shepard is generally accurate with her gut feelings,” he says, drawing on the prestige of the title. On one hand, he’s curious himself. On another, he wants resolution, but he finds himself not particularly eager, almost reluctant, to  _ rush _ , now that things are in motion. 

There is arguing, of course, but in the end, Shepard and Garrus take the little shuttle down to the planet, as she had already decided. Armor for a human and a turian is scrounged up, dusty and of the most basic sort, hardly more than a thin plastic anchor for shields, a little slit for a sort of pocket, and an environmental suite in the helmet. It makes Shepard nostalgic for the  _ Normandy _ and the excellent combat armor she’d had.

Predictably, this is where things go catastrophic.

The shuttle makes it to the atmosphere, and without warning the power cuts out and the shuttle drops. Shepard is thrown hard on impact, almost out of the restraints, and it takes her nearly an hour to come to her senses and wiggle free of the wreckage. She’s in the enclosed life support section and from what she can tell, the rest of the shuttle tore free on atmosphere, including the communications suite.

With no windows and no sensors, Shepard can’t be sure what kind of environment is waiting outside. Sparks jump from wires overhead and there is a distinctly wet film on the floor of the shuttle that Shepard thinks might be rising. Shepard reaches for the handle overhead and pulls herself up out of the seat, then clambers over a shelf of bent floor. Movement is easy, almost gliding, and Shepard notes _lower gravity_. Her armor is flickering back to life, pulling up shields then the vitals and environmental readouts. All good inside the shuttle, then. She twitches her finger to bring up the local map and the little triangle beacon of Garrus on the map pulses nearby. 

“Anomaly detected,” the shuttle says. “Anomaly detected. Please return to ship. Anomaly detected.”

Shepard clambers down the shuttle, following the Garrus-beacon. For the force of the impact, this part of the shuttle really isn’t in that bad shape. There’s a lot of things tossed around, a lot of broken metal and sparks, but it doesn’t look like anything majorly affecting internal integrity. As she shimmies over the edge of a drop, with a little stretching she can see out of a crack in the wall, then inhales, shimmies back up, and goes over to the crack to push it wider.

“No way in hell,” Shepard says. 

“Anomaly detected,” the shuttle says again.

“No way in hell,” Shepard repeats. Outside is something like a mangrove, the shuttle on top of a huge root and below a vast expanse of lavender liquid, above a huge navy blue sky, and between massive trees as far as the eye can see. If she squints, it almost looks like a surreal photo of Earth, never mind the fine drizzle coming down. 

Except the drizzle is going  _ up _ , from the lavender water? to the sky, and some of it catches on the shuttle and soaks the floor, and when Shepard scoops it back out of the crack it rejoins the rest of the liquid going up.

“Anomaly fucking detected alright,” she says, and goes to shimmy back over the drop. Garrus is never going to believe this.

Garrus, when she finds him, is standing, but half-leaning against the wall and dazed. 

“You okay, big guy?” she asks.

“Um,” Garrus says and peels himself slowly off the wall.

“You’re looking...wobbly,” she says.

Garrus teeters a bit on his feet. “I hit my head a few times on the way down. Thrown out of life support, obviously. Knocked around a little.”

“What about that steel casing you have for a skull?”

“Pretty hard,” he says, the pacing of the words just a little off, “But not hard enough, apparently. My helmet came off. I don’t know where it went but clearly I can breathe, wherever we are.”

“Wasn’t it locked on?” she asks, coming closer to look at the back and sides of his head. No blood, at least. “May I?”

“Of course it was,” he says, turning to make it easier to look at his scalp. “Go ahead. I don’t think it was that bad, though.”

Shepard probes at his skull before she responds, gently and then with more force. No sponginess, thank god. “No, you’re right on that one. Do turians get concussions?”

Garrus gives her a weary look. “I thought you knew more about turian anatomy than that.”

“I’m really proud of you for not laughing while you said that,” she says.

“Thanks.”

“Concussions?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Brain bruising, right?”

“Like rattling a cockroach around in a tin can,” she says, patting Garrus on the shoulder. “Any nausea? Sleepiness?”

“Vertigo,” he says, “obviously. Thirsty. I’m-”

Garrus staggers, gripping hard on Shepard’s shoulder, so that she steps back with him as he almost falls. He dry heaves once, and then again. 

“My god,” she grunts, as she helps him straighten up, the servos of her knees and ankles audibly whirring, “you’re heavy enough without the armor, Garrus, this is ridiculous. Whew-easy, easy, don’t tip the other way, now.”

“I,” he says, stops, swallows, then says, “I’m good.”

“Alright,” she says. “Let’s get you up. We’re going to have to find the rest of the shuttle if you want the good first aid kit. I just have that shitty gel. The comms suite broke off, too. You’ll probably have to tinker it a bit so we can call the ship.”

“I knew you keep me around for a reason,” Garrus says as they head back, Garrus leaning heavily onto Shepard. Coming to the first dented upthrust in the floor, Shepard climbs up and then leans over to help Garrus just as he reaches the top and sways. Her knees whirr as she pulls and then they’re both over.

“Look at this,” Shepard says, pointing to the crack in the shuttle wall. Garrus looks outside for a long few moments. He swears explosively. 

“What the hell is that about?” Garrus asks when Shepard stands behind him.

“I don’t know, but what’s that past it?”

“Where?” Garrus asks. Shepard jerks the crack open wider and they both step through.

“Okay,” Shepard says. “Look over there.”

“Smoke,” Garrus says. “Wreckage, you think?”

“I think wreckage. And it’s not far.”   
“Worth a look,” Garrus says. 

Shepard stands on the edge of the root, gauging the distance to the next, and goes back to Garrus.

“Could be problematic,” she says. “I can climb across, and I’ll help you, but I need to know if you think you can make it. Looks like a couple hundred meters. And it’s a long way down.”

“I don’t know,” Garrus says. “Can you lift me?”

“Um,” Shepard says, eyes glazing as she thinks. Her face clears and she shakes her head. “No. Not for that distance. Not unless you want to drift away or have a combo detonated right on top of your armor. And the food thing, too.”

“I thought biotics were meant to move things?"

“Don’t be an idiot.”

“Shepard,” Garrus says, sounding almost normal, “you’re the most powerful biotic I’ve ever met. I saw you shove a thresher maw into the path of my rifle.”

“Yes,” Shepard says flatly, annoyed with herself. “Scale, not magnitude. I used to be the best at marble targets out of all the biotics I know...There’s exercises for it. I kind of let it slide for a while. I can throw you into upper atmosphere, probably. Or twenty of you. That’s the best I’ve got. Sorry I was in a coma.”

“Okay,” Garrus says at last. “Um. I think I can do it. Don’t throw me into the atmosphere.”

Shepard gives him a long surveying look, then does it again. He looks more unsteady than he did before-if he was a human, Shepard would bet money on sweating and blanching-but the visible bits of hard carapace show no marks or scratches and his armor is flickering with shields, the colors just on the edge of what she can see.

Garrus has taken some pretty nasty hits before and she trusts him to be able to gauge himself, but if she can’t spot anything potentially dangerous that he might be too banged around to notice, they might as well just sit in the shuttle until the rations run out because he’ll be just as dead either way. 

“Okay,” Shepard says, and starts moving. She uses her hands first, gripping tight to one of the big ridges in the-bark? it’s almost velvety-before stomping her feet hard into another ridge so the sticky bits stay in place. Garrus slides out, Shepard reaching to help him stick his own feet in place. Garrus looks increasingly ill as they move, his mandibles clamped tight to his face, but they go without incident until right before Shepard is about to detach and move onto the new root. She fumbles with Garrus’ right foot, his hand slips on the bark, and next thing she knows there’s a massive splash way down below. 

Later, she gives herself credit for not hesitating to plan, just this once, because immediately dropping like a rock is the only reason she is able to reach Garrus before he sinks out of sight. 

Shepard hits the water hard, headfirst, shields smashing apart and reforming as flickers of color. The air bubbles shoot up in the dim water. She grabs downward at the faint smear, then again, viciously scissor-kicks and grabs again. She slides off the back of his collar and then his hand, from the slick surface of both and the weight of his body. She gasps, inside the helmet, and stretches out like a starfish, reaching once more, and catches his hand.

Shepard tightens her grip, twists her body, and kicks for the surface, dragging Garrus behind. When they break surface, he is choking, but it clears after a couple of good coughs. 

“Oh, hell,” Garrus says, clinging tight to Shepard. She thanks her armor’s designers for forethought in whatever it is that makes her float without treading water. 

“My god, Garrus,” Shepard says. She hooks an arm under his. With a little contorting she’s able to get him a bit more out of the water and she risks the biotics to get the two of them back up the side of the tree, though that’s a near thing when Garrus almost doesn’t come down again. After a moment of consideration for alien biology, she thwacks him hard on the back with a closed fist and is rewarded with one last hard gurgle of water out of his mouth.

“I thought you could swim,” she says.

“A turian only goes in water to drown,” Garrus wheezes. The hoarse flanging is a combination that Shepard is interested to note, but not eager to ever hear again.

“Hell, Garrus,” she says, laying flat on her back beside him. “Did you think the scars weren’t enough?”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

Shepard fumbles a meal bar out of her armor, tears the foil open with her teeth, and eats it in two bites. “I’ll let you know when I’m not so dizzy.”

"You got another one of those in there?"

"Yes, but it'll make you shit yourself to death," Shepard says, passing him the spare. 

"Nah," Garrus says, reading the packaging. "Should be fine."

"I knew I should have stayed on Earth," Shepard says, staring up at the sky.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter features a bit of something I generated using Vulgar to serve as Garrus' native language. It was unexpectedly weird to transliterate and not entirely internally consistent, but hopefully not irritating or super difficult to figure it out from context. If you'd like a word for word translation just let me know, I'd be more than happy. I have an entire 2000 word dictionary for it now, so. I've never used another language in a fic, so let me know how you feel about it.

Periodically, as Shepard and Garrus rest, they hear or feel deep percussive throbs, the bass noises of something truly massive. The noises come from closer, and the air is tight and heavy like an impending stormfront, although the drizzle upward hasn’t thickened at all. 

“Thunder,” Shepard suggests, though her hands are tensed and haloed with the faintest biotic field. 

“I can’t believe we didn’t bring a gun,” Garrus says. “Even one!”

“It sounds more like a horn, maybe,” Shepard says, staring up at the sky. A little sliver is visible above the tree, or the fungal growth, or whatever the hell these things are. 

Another throb. The drizzle slows to a stop. 

Another.

“Oh, shit,” Garrus and Shepard say almost in unison. Shepard moves closer to the trunk, gesturing frantically with her hand for Garrus to move behind her. The drizzle pauses in the air, shimmering like jewels, then splashes back down to the water. The silence shivers. A bone-deep unease settles in Shepard’s stomach, and the haze around her fingers darkens. A familiar reek of ozone fills the air.

An enormous arced spike slams down between the treetops and into the water, sending it slopping back and forth like a grenade blast. The whoompf is deafening. Another spike thuds down, the teeth-rattling hoooom, and then the first shoots up, dizzyingly fast, and goes far toward the horizon before it falls to earth again. The second follows. Far off in the shadows of the mangrove, there is an echo, as if another set of legs is moving on the other side of a vast body. 

“Big boy,” Shepard mouths. She is rapidly running out of words for the scale of whatever absurdity is happening on this planet. There is a low, vicious hum, just on the edge of Shepard’s hearing, and she rolls to look at Garrus.

“Not me,” he hisses, his mandibles flaring out as wide as they’ll go. The hum staggers and zig zags up the scale. The noise hovers on one note-Shepard claps her palms hard against her ears-her vision pops like a lens flare, something goes hot and liquid under her hands, then suddenly boiling as the hum crescendos, tremendous whoom Dopplering by-

“Fuck,” Shepard yelps, explosively, scrambling blindly at both sides of her face, swiping at whatever’s burning, and biting and spitting against whatever’s shoved into her mouth-

she is pinned down, hard, despite desperate struggling, and after a moment her vision clears and Garrus is the one pinning and his hand is clamped against her mouth. Her feet are flat against his gut, dug in with all the strength that tightly wound prosthetic joints can muster, and his other hand is up as if to stop the disemboweling. His eyes are very, very wide, and he is staring past her head at another massive spike planted in the water. There is no noise, anywhere, and the water is still. 

Shepard whimpers on an in-and-out breath, tongue pressed against his hand, teeth dug into his fingers-is that why his eyes are so wide, or is that terror?-her hands pressed to the side of her face. The burning gets worse, and she holds herself as taut as a corpse to keep from swearing or squirming.

Oh, god, Shepard thinks, I’ve gone deaf. 

Then, oh, god, she thinks, I’ve been shot, I’m on fire, I’m being skinned.

The spike pivots, the surface almost opalescent in the light. Garrus’ grip tightens reflexively. Shepard makes a tiny noise in her throat, eyes watering. The treetops rustle. A long shimmering stretch splits the leaves apart, a wide clear expanse like shield cloaking that changes color like it’s been splattered with ink, and then a massive spade-shaped head is making yet another deafening noise at alarmingly close range. When Garrus flinches, his talon scrapes the side of her jaw, and Shepard convulses. Lights flare and die behind her eyes. 

The head swivels. There is something….

Shepard can’t pinpoint what, exactly, is so viscerally wrong, the scale, the way it glistens like viscera but also like metal but also like oil, the noises, the reptilian face, the gelatinous eyes, all of them, swiveling madly, the way it fades in and out of view without changing, the smell, oh god, the smell of it: she does not vomit, but it is a tightrope walk. 

The head swivels again. There is a great in-rushing of air like a hull breach , and eight great gills split open on the thing’s neck; the air explodes back out, without wind or noise, but Shepard’s head clangs like a bell and her vision goes silver. Dimly, she sees the gills split, the head swivel once more, then rise above the trees again, apparently satisfied with its examination of the environment. Another whumpf, the spike-the leg, Shepard realizes, God have mercy, those are legs-lifts away, and the alien vanishes into the world.

Garrus lifts his hand from her mouth and Shepard instantly hunches up, probing her jaw and cheeks. The pain is terrible and unabating; enormous blister and burns on both sides, a fairly shallow scratch on one side from Garrus. She reaches up higher, to her ears, and snatches her hands back with a yelp. She takes a second to steel herself, then goes back to rip whatever it is out of her ears and fling it to the ground. The splotches of metal seethe and steam, and the last few wires of Shepard’s translator bugs melt into the puddles.

Shepard lays on her side staring at the bugs for a moment before she shoves Garrus aside with a cry.

“Oh, hell, oh, hell,” she chants, hands scrabbling over the armor casing her legs, fumbling it aside and almost sobbing in relief despite herself when her prosthetics are hot but unharmed. “Oh, thank you, not again.”

“Ush r̠˔o roj,” Shepard hears from behind her, in an exceptionally wobbly set of double tones, panting, and then again. 

“Hell,” she says, gasping a little. The damn thing’s been in her ear for the better part of thirty years. “Garrus, my translator’s busted, I need English.”

“Kuto. U tàj kʼœtol kàtuthïl ,” Garrus says, “U tàj kuki r̠˔o?”

“I can’t understand you, big guy.”

Garrus looks at her, a bit mournfully. “U tàj dzol r̠˔o esho qurudegàlɞ- U retudru aru dï English.”

“Your something something English, something something my head is full of cotton wool and shit Shepard doesn’t know,” Shepard says, closing up the armor on her leg. It’s fascinating to hear Garrus speak-what was it? Qotu?-despite the unfortunate circumstances. For once he’s not overlaid by the voice of the translator earbug and the flanging in his voice is free-range. She settles in to listen to him rumble, for a moment, and then sits up so fast that he rolls away instinctively.

“Garrus,” she says. “You can’t think of any English, can you?”

“Aru,” he says flatly, lying on his back and staring balefully up. That, Shepard decides, sounds like some kind of no.

“Oh, hell,” Shepard says. “Listen, I’m not a doctor or anything, but that sounds like a really bad sign.”

“Ràch,” Garrus says. “Go roj.” 

“Fuck,” Shepard says, emphatically, then again, just to make a point. She tips her head to the side, wincing when it pulls on the skin of her jaw. She dispenses medigel from her arm and starts daubing it on thickly. “Garrus. Wait. You can understand me.”

Garrus consider this for a moment, then says, “Ràch.”

“So,” Shepard says and pokes his forehead, leaving a smear of medigel, “there’s gotta be some English up there. Just, uh, dig it up for a bit while I do this. Oh, fuck, that hurt.”

They sit in silence for some time, while Shepard waits out the burning then the chill of the medigel on her face. She again comes very close to crying, with the relief of the pain stopping. She does not think about the gargantuan alien or what it implies about this planet. She does not think about whatever the hell it did that melted her translator bugs and scrambled Garrus like a bowl of eggs. 

“Ràch is yes, isn’t it?” she asks. 

“Ràch,” Garrus says, by way of confirmation, she assumes. “Ru r̠˔o Qotu güsh.”

“I’m not a Speak and Say,” Shepard translates, a little sarcastically, waving her hands. “Yes, yes, Garrus, I get that. I’m helping.”

Garrus works his mouth and sighs. Shepard crosses her legs and rests her her hands on her knees, the picture of patience.

Garrus keeps his mandibles neutral, though he’s spooked as all hell. Not a headache, not a concussion, not alcohol, not dizziness, not pain: he has no idea what’s wrong with him now. He’s never wholesale forgotten an entire language before. He knows it’s still there; he can understand Shepard just fine. He wonders what Shepard heard in that few minutes. He can still hear the sound, a rumbling register as loud as a shuttle taking off. He hadn’t meant to pin Shepard, but an instant after she’d opened her mouth he had reacted without a thought. No one making an expression like that is about to be quiet and it had felt like a good idea to avoid that thing’s attention.

No translator bugs but...no one but humans has used translator bugs in longer than Garrus has been alive. They produce their own omnitools, yes, but surely some things are universal?

Garrus sits up and reaches for Shepard’s arm. She lets him take it and fumble with the omnitool, bemused. He pulls up a viewscreen and flips it around so it’s not facing Shepard. He pokes through a couple of screens without success-he never learned to read English, at least that’s not something new-before he hits on something with a long scrollbar beside it. It’s either the language menu or it’s her messages, so he swipes through the list and switches things on at random. At this point, Shepard catches on and flips the screen to do it herself. A little loading bar with a smiling face appears on the screen. A label below shows a company name and trademark date.

“Ah!” Shepard says, startled and delighted. “The omnitool has translation software? Does yours?”

“Not very good ones. They tend to skip words,” Garrus says. “Ah, kuto, my head hurts. What’s a Speak and Say?”

“Is kuto a curse word?” Shepard asks, tipping her head. Garrus gives her a look. “So it is! Excellent.”

Garrus rubs his head, then does a double-take and brings his hand down to examine his finger. “What’s...you….you qʼükichʉr...qʼükichʉruch,you bite me, bit me, hell, Shepard, you bit me. I think you broke skin.”

“Let’s hope not,” Shepard says absently, prodding the film of medigel to see how far its progressed. Still sticky. She lets it lie. The loading bar, almost full, that flashes and closes out, finished. “My mouth is full of bacteria. Strep. Staph. Something like that.”

“Ew,” Garrus says, turning his hand back and forth. “Those are tooth marks. How hard can humans bite?”

“‘Bout a hundred twenty pounds of force,” Shepard says promptly, one hand on the joint in question. “Less than a dog. A gorilla can hit thirteen hundred per square inch, though. So. Don’t let one of those get their teeth in you. Natural armor, my ass.”

“Your average human,” Garrus points out, “doesn’t set off a metal detector when they’re naked.”

Shepard quirks an eyebrow and grins. She peels off the remnants of the medigel and drops it, flexing her jaw to test the pain level. 

“Manageable,” she says. “No thanks to your claws there.”

“Ah,” Garrus says. “Sorry.”

“So,” Shepard says, inhaling through her nose and exhaling through her mouth. “Our new friend with the big head.”

Garrus shivers, almost, a ripple passing through his fringe and down his shoulders. “Its teeth were back-angled. Unless I missed my mark, they were all around the inside of its throat, too. What the hell does it eat?”

“Do you think you can stand up?” Shepard asks, getting to her feet and offering a hand.

Garrus takes it to pull himself up. He looks worse than ever, like a bedraggled, wet piece of roadkill. He says, “Yes. I want to get to that comm.”

Some time later he says, “If you don’t stop twisting your head back and forth you’re going to break your neck.” 

“If you tip any further to the side you’re going to drown again,” Shepard says, still swiveling. She knows that her eyes are unlikely to catch something her ears don’t, but it’s the principal of the thing. “Good thing it’s warm. Don’t need you catching turian hypothermia.”

“That smoke really didn’t look this far away,” Garrus says. Far off, he hears a faint whum and the water below begins to eddy around. “Oh, Christ.”

“I’m glad your English is coming back, but Christ is a long i sound, not a short one,” Shepard says, stopping. “Did you hear that?”

“Damn,” Garrus says. “There’s no cover over here.”

“There wasn’t further back, either,” she says. “Shit. Keep going or hunker down?”

“Do you know what made it want to take a look?” Garrus asks.

“No,” Shepard says. “Gotcha. Keep going. We have another cross, here.”

This crossing is an easy one, with the two branches barely two feet apart, and then another one further down that’s a similar distance. Shepard steps right across, and holds her hands out to help Garrus over. She’s fairly sure he doesn’t need the help, but it feels like a good thing to do. The second crossing follows the same pattern, until there’s another whum, much closer this time, and Garrus loses his balance. Shepard yanks hard as he tips backwards and they both fall, Shepard rolling to lighten the impact. She reconsiders when Garrus topples like a log; maybe he needs more help than she thought. 

“Easy, big guy,” she murmurs, helping him up. He’s stiff-legged and rigid. Shepard’s vision goes silver, though there is no pain this time. Garrus takes a step forward, staring blankly ahead, and then falls face-first. Shepard staggers with the weight, even under lighter gravity, and almost falls herself or drops him, but she manages to lower him to the branch with a bit of alarming grinding from her knee joints and sit on him before she loses her balance entirely. A leg slams down while the two of them are hunched down, then shoots away without the creature taking notice. The hum doesn’t rise, but Garrus jerks hard under her, one of his hands scrabbling. A second leg passes. 

The moment the air is still and silent again Shepard whirls around and drops to her knees to run her omnitool over Garrus, who is still stiff and rigid and staring. One of his hands taps out a wild beat against his armor, a rattling like Morse code sending out S.O.S signals over and over. The omnitool beeps, flashing SIGNAL NOT FOUND. Shepard whacks it, but the message doesn’t change. Shepard sits back on her heels. His eyes move and then his head turns, and Shepard leans over.

She gets as far as, “Hell, Garrus,” before she snaps her mouth shut and braces herself to haul him further from the edge of the branch. Garrus wasn’t moving to get her attention: his eyes are jerking to the upper right, faster with each repetition, and a moment later the rest of his body starts shivering violently. Shepard keeps her hands flat against his chest, to do something she hasn’t figured out, or in case he tries to roll. She doesn’t know what to do with a human seizure-what the hell does one do for a seizing alien? 

Garrus twitches and jerks for a minute or two more. Shepard looks at him helplessly, now sprawled and out cold, before rolling him onto his side in an inspired fit of dimly remembered medical information. 

“I don’t even know,” she grunts, while pushing him over, “what this is for. In case you vomit?”

Shepard sits back on her heels again. To the unconscious Garrus she asks, “Can you even vomit?”

She checks his pulse on the suit monitor; good and steady. His color is improved, his mandibles flex in a nice fleshy way, and his breathing is regular. 

“Good,” she says. “Good. Now....get up and start talking.”

Shepard shifts to sit cross-legged and rests her hands on her knees. Her helmet readout beeps warnings about heart rate.

“This,” she says, inhaling and exhaling sharply through her nose. “is not an emergency. This is fine. I can stay calm and think about what to do next. This is not a sign that I have lost my nerve completely and should just lay in bed all day. Oh, boy.”

She plants her face in her hands. She peeks through her fingers to see if Garrus shows any signs of movement, then puts her hands down. He doesn’t stir.

“I thought this part wasn’t supposed to last long,” she mutters. “If you die from this I’ll kill you.”

She waits, and waits. A long time seems to pass, an eternity of things happening overhead. She comes up with and discards theories. Garrus makes tiny, faint moaning noises, but he doesn’t speak or sit up or blink. Shepard doesn’t know anything about medicine; between medigel and medical personnel, it’s not something she’s ever had to know beyond basic first aid. Anything too severe to be rapidly stabilized in a combat zone is too severe for anyone but a medic, and no one uses bullets anymore. In space, if your ship is shot down, you die. Planetside, if you’re shot with a thermal round it’s either deflected with armor or you’re shot in the head with your shields down. There’s not much lumping around waiting. 

Shepard likes to think of herself as a fairly well-rounded, experienced woman. She’s traveled, she’s read a couple of books, she’s spent several months in a coma. She’s seen a fair amount of people both living and dead in all sorts of conditions, but this is something else. Shepard pats Garrus’ hand when he makes another small noise, almost a whimper. Is it, she wonders idly, like the coma, or more like being knocked out? He certainly doesn’t sound like he’s peacefully unconscious; he sounds like he’s in rather a lot of pain. 

Shepard checks the timer on her omnitool. They’ve been stuck here almost six hours. She hopes Garrus comes round soon. She wants to make it to the comm suite before dark, whenever that is, but at least before they rest, and preferably the resting will take place back in the remains of the shuttle, where Shepard can at least pretend nothing is about to melt her legs off. She thinks, wistfully, of tucking herself between Garrus and the bulkhead and taking a good long nap while a rescue shuttle is inbound.

She pats his hand again. Like a big farm dog, really. 

“I think,” Shepard says, “you should stay like this. This is very restful. I feel like I’m on vacation.” She glances up at the sky, pleasantly free of rising drizzle. “I’m sunbathing. Tanning. It’s...fifty. Fahrenheit. I don’t know what you guys use. Not really tanning weather. Sweater, heat on, really.”

She looks down at him. Still. 

“Well,” she says. “I don’t really mean that. I won’t be mad if you wake up.”

Shepard taps her fingers off her thigh. “You know, I bet we could get them to bring you some nice snacks when they pick us up.”

Shepard makes an effort to loosen her posture and lay her hands flat, uncurling from her jaw down to her hips. There is risk here, and unknown elements, yes; but that is nothing new to Shepard. This is not a war zone. This is hardly even a walk in the park. There are no excuses for being on red alert already. 

“Perfect timing,” Shepard mouths, looking upward when she hears a splash in the distance. No massive legs come screaming through the trees; no whistling rises in pitch until her vision explodes. Instead there is long, dragging, heavy silence. Shepard shifts, moving into a crouch. 

A moment passes.

Another splash, closer this time. Shepard straightens a little. She places her hands on her thighs. 

A vee forms in the water below, of something moving very quickly under the surface. It smashes into one of the other trees, making a noisy splashing eddy like something scrabbling and scrambling.

Shepard’s hands glimmer blue. She moves over to place herself in front of Garrus. The feeling of biotics starts up in her gut, a jittery brightness like static or adrenaline. The hair on her neck is ramrod upright. Her skin crawls. A hand bursts from the water, grips the tree. A second splashes up and grips, and the hands clench tight. Shepard breathes so fast she is gasping. The familiarity of that skin, even at a distance, has her arctic cold. 

The hands reach higher, and arms appear. The hands reach higher, and a head appears. The hands reach still higher, and a back follows, and legs, and the horrible creature scuttles up the tree in a way that sets off alarm bells deep in Shepard’s lizard brain. She lurches to her feet and thrusts her hands forward in one explosive movement. She catches herself before launching into a charge instinctively, but she twists her hands to make another lash of biotics just in time to detonate the first as it hits. The husk-or something far too similar for comfort-bursts.

Shepard drops to her knees, shuddering uncontrollably. On autopilot, she makes tiny biotic bursts between her hands to bleed off the energy she’s brimfull with, but as her fear builds so do her biotics. She makes bigger, more tightly controlled bursts. Her teeth start to chatter. Her head is a useless swarm of chill and adrenaline. 

Shepard vomits twice. She stays on all fours, spitting and gagging. Eventually, her head empty as a rung bell, Shepard straightens. Her skin is still crawling. She sits on the edge of the branch and stares upward, blankly, numbly. There are billions of things out there that Shepard can communicate with effortlessly and almost instantly, and what a fat fucking lot of good that does anyone. The distance is so shamelessly illusory.

Behind her, there is a soft insectile noise. Brief silence, and then another rippling bug noise. Shepard crams it all down right and tight, though her hands keep spasming. Garrus doesn’t need this on top of everything else. Might have been a hallucination, for all Shepard knows-wouldn’t be the first time. No point in giving him a worse shock over nothing. 

“Amen,” Shepard says upon rising and turning, despite the instinctive shivers down her spine at the noise. “Oh, Garrus, you look like hell.”

To be fair, Garrus has put a lot of work into facial expressions and body language that Shepard can read with little misinterpretation. He clearly isn’t bothering with the effort, but every tense line of his body and the unstifled whimper equivalents telegraph misery on every level of communication. She kneels beside him and helps him sit up, propping with her shoulder when he sways drunkenly.

“Shepard,” he says, faintly. “Come closer.”

“Yes, Garrus,” she says, humoring the poor bastard. He claps one hand to the side of her face. She stops scanning the water below to look at him.

“Listen,” he says.

“Yes, Garrus,” she says. 

“That…” he says, trails off, closing his eyes and reeling, then steadies and continues, “was….fucking awful, Shepard.”

“Yes, Garrus,” she says. “You had a seizure. I think.”

“Yeah, probably,” he says, moving both of his hands to his face. He vomits, suddenly and violently, all over the front of Shepard’s armor. 

“Oh,” Shepard says glumly, looking down at herself. “Yuck.”

“Shepard, we need to get back to the ship,” he says. His voice is weak and wobbly. “We have no weapons, the shuttle is smashed, there’s some weird shit on this planet, and I just had the first seizure of my entire life.”

Shepard bites hard on the side of her cheek. Fervently, she says, “Thank god. I was ready for you to say we have to go tearing after that thing and kill it.”

“Normally,” he says. “And I am game for that, don’t get me wrong. But we can do that later. I need a drink.”

“Yeah, me too,” she says and stands. “Come on, big guy. We gotta get to the comm suite.”

She helps Garrus to his feet, yet again, and bulwarks him with her side when he’s upright, again, because he’s listing so far he may as well still be laying down.Garrus hobbles like an old broken thing. Shepard tries, once or twice, to make conversation and gets nothing but irritable grunts. She doesn’t take a step without jerking her head from side to side, searching and listening. 

Slowly, painfully, they navigate around the tree and the next, coming at last to the remains of the rest of the shuttle. They’ve stopped smoking, but they look worse than than the other half. There’s a half-arch of the outer composite, and inside are a scattering of chairs torn free from their bolts and broken screens. Shepard eases Garrus down onto a seat that feels solid. She moves to the comm suite, which is thankfully in nearly one piece, and in good enough condition to link up to the ship’s comms after buggering the wires. 

“Oh, thank god,” Shepard says when the speaker makes a buzzing noise and she hears the pilot talking. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

“Hello? Shuttle, is that you?”

“Yes-” Shepard fiddles with a dial, clearing the audio some. “Shuttle crashed, Garrus is injured, we need an evac. Hurry. Please hurry.”

“Um, hang on-” the pilot is silent briefly. “Okay, I have your coordinates. Don’t go too far.”

“We’ll stay put,” Shepard says. “ETA?”

“Could be a bit,” the pilot says. “Gotta figure out who’s coming to get you two. What do you need in terms of medical supplies? You’re patched right to the shipwide comms, no need to specify who you’re talking to. Just to make it easier.”

“Whatever you’d use for a turian that had seizures,” Shepard says, half-turning to peer at Garrus, who is now hunched over on the seat and watching her blearily. “And has a concussion. Good otherwise.”

“Alright,” the pilot says. “Sit tight. We’ll get you two as fast as we can.”

“Wait,” Shepard says. “Bring some food, please. And weapons. Bring all the fucking weapons on that ship.”

“What?”

“Biotic,” Shepard says. “I’m starving.”

“Alright,” the pilot says, still sounding confused. “Give us...they’re telling me not even an hour. Just hang out right there.”

“Okay,” Shepard says. “Leave this line open. I don’t know how long this will work for. It’s a little jury-rigged.”

The pilot doesn’t respond, but she hears people moving around through the static. She lingers for a moment with her hand on the touchpad. She steps back, then goes to Garrus without looking back at the comm. Distances, and illusions. 

Shepard sits cross-legged on the floor of the shuttle. She stares into the distance, face blank. She is sore now, and stiff. Her joints are aching. Abruptly, she says, “I think I saw a husk.”

Garrus looks up immediately. “What?”

“I did,” Shepard says. “It’s dead. It was in the water. Came up one of the tree things. I couldn’t-I didn’t even stop to think. I don’t know if there’s more or where it came from.”

Garrus reaches out, and his fingers are stopped a few inches from her shoulder plate. He says, “Shepard, you’re shielding.”

“Oh,” she says. She drops the shield. “No wonder I’m so hungry.”

“Are they coming?”

Shepard nods.

“Good,” Garrus says on a long sigh. “Good. I’m not sticking around with husks.”

“You believe me?” Shepard asks.

“Yes,” Garrus says, without hesitating to think. “I could smell biotics when I woke up.”

“They don’t have a smell, Garrus, for the thousandth time.”

“You just don’t notice it anymore,” he says doggedly. “I wish you could do a stasis field.”

“Then we’d have to carry it over here with us,” Shepard says. “I’m uncomfortable enough already, thanks.”`

“I need a nap,” Garrus says. “I need a nap, and I need a drink. Then we can discuss what is happening on this hell planet. Husks are like ants.”

Shepard scrubs her hands over her face. “Please don’t mention ants, either. Yuck.”

Garrus pats her on the shoulder. “I’m not even really sure what an ant is. You know, you could stand to learn something about my planet.”

Shepard looks at him, aghast. “Garrus. Palaven.”

Garrus freezes. “Husks,” he says. “There are Reaper troops on this planet. Shepard.”

“Even if we figure out what happened with the relay…” Shepard says. She takes Garrus’ hands. He doesn’t relax at all, but he does inhale and exhale. 

“I can’t take the chance,” he says flatly. “We can go back to the ship, but we can’t leave. Not until we know what’s going on.”

Shepard’s grip tightens, but Garrus doesn’t react. She can feel her nausea rising. They sit in silence like that, watchful and holding tight, until the evac shuttle lands and the Langenauers are helping them onto it. 

“You two?” Shepard asks once they’re in the air. She’s still gripping one of Garrus’ hands, and she rips into a ration bar held with her free hand. She eats the bar and then two more before her blood sugar alarm stops beeping. 

“Yes,” Ayelet says, at the helm of the shuttle. 

“Makes sense,” Shepard says. “I guess.”

Graene holds out another ration bar that Shepard devours in two bites. “Damn,” Graene says. “You biotics are bottomless.”

“L5n implant,” Shepard says through a mouthful of trail mix scrounged from the shuttle cabinets. “Stronger, but hungrier. Oh, god, I’ve never been so happy in my life. Do you have a gallon of milk and a whole turkey?”

“No,” Graene says. “I have…” She searches the seat around her and holds up empty hands. “Whatever you already ate. Are you going to peel the tile up and eat it?”

“Maybe,” Shepard says, evaluating it. Garrus’ hand squirms in her grip. She looks over, and he’s slumped sideways in the seat with his head against the wall of the cabin, too controlled to be unconscious but too slack to be in good shape. He’s breathing rapidly, and she thinks he might have a fever. “Can this thing go any faster? I’ve got real bad news, and Vakarian over here looks like he’s going to die en route.”

“How bad?” Graene asks. She even sounds curious.

Shepard closes her eyes and leans her head back. “There is at least one type of Reaper shock troop on the planet, and at least one native wildlife that is capable of melting my translator bugs and possibly triggering seizures just by its presence. The metal content in a turian carapace seems to be the reason for that, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Are you sure you don’t have any more food?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for suicidal ideation. As always, reviews both positive and negative are appreciated, and please let me know if you spot any glaring errors.

“You ever read the Odyssey, off in therapy school?” Shepard asks Langenauer. They’re in the smallest conference room Shepard has ever seen, waiting for the rest of the ship to gather. Garrus is the only one sitting. After seizing again in the upper atmosphere, Shepard was ready to personally manhandle him to medbay. The compromise is that Garrus is hooked up to an IV hung with various mysterious potions, but Shepard studiously doesn’t react when he wobbles. 

Langenauer is the closest thing to a medic on the ship, and she has made it very clear that any relevant training she has is out of date. Graene helped with the picking and choosing of appropriate treatment given their resources, but it's a bargain bin hospital staffed by the criminally clueless.

“Of course,” Langenauer says, adjusting one of the IV bags. “Children on planet go to school too, Shepard.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Shepard says, waving off this wisdom. “But you know where he says something like ‘Take courage, I’m a soldier, I have seen worse things than this’? Homer is an idiot. That's a shitty pep talk. There's always something even worse.” 

Langenauer gives Shepard the kind of weary look she's very familiar with. Shepard shrugs. So the translation was a little clumsy. The point stands. 

“Reapers were bad,” Shepard clarifies with the air of one talking to an especially stupid child. “If they're all dead, that's good and I'll skip to the loony bin whistling. If they aren't, it makes the ‘Reapers were bad’ worse.” 

“Shepard,” Garrus says. “Don't take it out on poor Ayelet. It's unfair.”

“I'm not,” Shepard says,although it feels unsporting to argue with a man that's squinting because he has a seizure hangover. 

“I have a doctorate,” Poor Ayelet says mildly, taking a seat across from Garrus at the table. “And I personally helped develop several of the modifications that make your prosthetics so ideal for your lifestyle. Commander.” 

“I'm going to sit in the hallway if you both start in on me,” Shepard says. “Graene is the only one that's nice to me anymore.” 

“Only out of misguided hero worship,” Game says as she enters, trailed by the pilot and a few others she's rounded up,with an armful of esoteric medical things that she and Ayelet begin doing inscrutable things with. 

“Please,everyone,take a seat,” Shepard says, handily concealing her aggravation. They do so,although Garrus and his accouterments get an unaccountably wide berth. Shepard twists a trio of ball bearings idly between her hands,ignoring the suspicious looks at her biotic use,while she continues. “Most of you aren't military and i'm retired,so this isn't a briefing. There's no mission here. I'm not in charge. The circumstances have changed; there is relevant information that you aren't going to like.” 

“Oh, get on with it,” the pilot says. Her hair is still at from an interrupted shower. 

Shepard whirls the ball bearings into a lopsided helix and winces, although a non-biotic has never noticed that sort of technical skill. “There are Reaper ground troops on the planet.”

This causes a clamor among the scientists. The Langenauer and Garrus are calm, but Garrus might just be unconscious. 

“That's why you wanted weapons,” the pilot says, overrun by two of the scientists demanding to know details. Shepard is increasingly thankful her mental state isn't common knowledge. That, and the weight of her word has its own gravity these days. 

“We can leave,” Shepard says. She stops the helix and collects the ball bear rings one by one and pockets them. “I don't think any of us really consider that an option. No? Good. Then we find out what and why before anything else. In any case the details can hopefully wait a bit. I need a nap. If you'll excuse me..” 

No one stops her from steering Garrus out of the room, as loud conversation wells up. They walk together to the miniscule rec room. Shepard settles Garrus in one chair and takes the other. She rests her head in her shaking hands and sighs, very quietly. 

“Not your best, but not bad,” Garrus allows. He prods one of the IV bags. “Think they'll let you go back down?”

“I don't want to go back down,” Shepard says into her hands. “I want to wake up.”

“Somehow,” Garrus says. “I don't think that's going to happen.”

“Garrus,” Shepard sighs and leans her head against his shoulder, not quite all the way to his cowl and careful not to jostle the IV needle.He doesn't move her off, but she didn't really think he would. Still, it's nice is nice to rest for just a minute. Shepard remembers the days towards the end of the war,when she's run on nothing but spite, and far earlier than that, the terrified faded memories of Akuze. Before she knew how endless fear corroded your guts and decimated your nerves until you were like a twitchy racehorse, it had been exhilarating. 

She hasn't thought about Akuze in years. She wonders how the thresher maws fared with the Reapers. She hopes every last one of the fuckers died in excruciating pain. 

She makes a mental note that once this is over she's going to Akuze. It’s been far too long since she's checked on any of those graves. It's not right for her to let those first ghosts sleep forgotten anymore.

Finally, her heart rate and adrenaline are dropping and the tremor is stopping. 

They're both quiet for a bit. Shepard gets to her feet. “I'm gonna go take a shower.” 

“Alright,” Garrus says. “I'll be around somewhere.” 

Shepard meanders to the little sonic shower squashed between two of the four cabins down this end of the ship. It's not as nice as a water shower feels, but there's nothing like knowing you’ve been scoured down to your gut microbes. Besides, water showers have always felt profligate to Shepard’s ship-brat inner child. She puts on her other pair of ship knits and sprawls out on the bunk. 

“Shepard,” says a tentative voice over the comm. Shepard tabs the button and says, “Yes?”

“We-Ship-we’re showing like, two other ships in the system,” the voice says, audibly nervous. She thinks it’s one of the younger scientists. 

“Alright,” Shepard says. “Do you know what kind?”

There is a moment of silence, while Shepard imagines people scuffling over the tac-comp and swearing at each other.

“No,” the voice says. This time it’s distinctly worried, but more like a teenager who doesn’t want to get in trouble, Shepard thinks, than any reasonable kind of fear. 

“Pull up the ship profiles in the tac comp,” Shepard says. She considers this, and with a bit of forced patience, she adds, “Compare them, please. Tell me if anything matches.”

There is another moment of silence. 

“Um,” the voice says. “A Reaper troop transport and...something else.”

“Alright,” Shepard says. “Thank you.”

After a bit, she tabs the intercom again and says, “Stay on the far side of the planet. If we can see them, they can see us. Keep far away.”

“Oh,” the voice says. “Alright.”

Oh, Lord, my kingdom for a marine, she thinks. 

She stares at the ceiling, and waits, and waits. Nothing comes. Her eyes stay dry. 

I will not do this again, she thinks, I refuse. I did my part. 

Shepard reaches into her mouth and pries the bugout ball from her wisdom tooth. She sits on the edge of the bunk, elbows on her knees, and considers the tiny thing between her nails. It’s an aborted replacement for the cyanide pills that are standard issue for all sensitive personnel. Aborted, because they hardly ever worked, and because when they did it was unpleasant for anyone nearby. 

Designed, of course, for the average healthy human in the prime of their life, at an average height and weight. The damn thing’s been in her tooth for decades now. It’s been through an atmosphere. There’s no way it works now.

Still.

Shepard turns it a bit to catch the light. It’s very pretty, for some unknown reason, like a tiny pearl or a candy. 

Weigh the options. Option one: take it, and take the risk, and consider the branching paths from that point (death, on one. metabolize the paralytic and the poison and then everyone knows). Option two: don’t take it, and throw it away, and see what happens (Reapers. again. how many what are they doing why are they here where else are they).

And yet. If she doesn’t. There are Reapers on this planet, who the hell knows why, she can’t think past the goddamn fear, she’s like a child that’s sobbing hysterically at the top of a slide. There is a sick, acrid taste in her mouth. 

If she takes it, she’s really just hoping for the best, because it’s worse odds than a coin toss that the bugout ball works. 

Something feels untoward about hoping for the best, in these circumstances.

It takes a few abortive heaves before Garrus gets to his feet. His headache and nausea are easing, though he's pretty sure he still has a fever and his lungs feel damp. He meanders through the ship, intent on a snack-he wonders if Shepard‘s metabolism is contagious-and a pod of coffee, now that he isn't heaving up those awful human reason bars that Shepard hauls around.

“Move,” Garrus orders a scientist that's letting in front of the dispenser, and snatches his coffee the instant the kid moves aside. Damn, but it's good to be a war hero. He drains the coffee, wondering how old the kid is. Maybe they're giving teenagers labs now. Granted, humans don't change color when they age, so the kid could be anywhere in his life cycle for all Garrus knows. Garrus drags his medicine leash to the other side of the dispenser so he can dial up an acetari. He picks at the acetari- reconstituted dispenser food is so mushy and gritty-before dumping the rest into the trash. 

“The dextro options are always so lacking in human ships,” Garrus says to the kid. “It always seemed a little centrist to me.” 

“Um,” the kid says. “It’s a synthesizer problem. The priority goes to levo stock…” 

“Sure,” Garrus says, learning casually on his pole, holding tight for balance. “Not your fault, I get it. Say, you people keep any alcohol on this ship?”

“Um,” the poor bastard says again.. “I did bring some, but I don't think -”

“Well, that's just fine,” Garrus says easily. “Let me give you a hand with it. Wouldn't want you to get into a tight corner.” 

The scientist fetches his prize, and Garrus continues his meandering, sure that Shepard is done by now. Even sonic showers are too wasteful for an overgrown ship kid. He's gotten nothing but lectures for anything involving water for years. Maybe it's a bit selfish of him, since everyone on the ship has vivid memories of the war, but he feels no urge to share. He needs a drink, and he's damn sure Shepard does too. 

He opens the cabin door with one hand, whiskey bottle in his elbow, and drags the cursed IV behind him with the other. He stops just inside, seeing Shepard’s uncomfortable frozen posture. There is something in her hand, innocuous enough, but her face is intent and set and she doesn’t react the slightest shiver when the door closes behind him. He sets the bottle down with a wet little clink. She doesn’t move. 

“Shepard,” Garrus says. His voice is all wrong. Her head snaps up. He briefly registers that her pupils are massive before he’s lunging forward as she crams her hand to her mouth. He snags her wrist and hauls, hard-it’s like yanking on a steel cable-fumbling over her hand, clutches whatever the tiny ball is, and then she’s squirming and gnawing at his hands because she’s pinned down and he throws himself back just as she slams hard with her feet and throws herself off the edge of the bunk. 

Shepard hits the ground and rolls, throwing up a lash before she’s even back on her feet. It shorts out just shy of the wall beside Garrus-she isn’t that stupid, they’re in vaccuum-but while he’s distracted she throws with the other hand and he’s jerked off his feet. With various mysterious hand motions and tiny wreaths of light she moves him fluidly into arm’s reach, slides the tiny ball out from his grip so deftly it’s like she’s using a needle, and crushes it under her foot. 

“Hang on,” she says, counting with little jerks of her finger, before she steps forward to catch him the instant the pull wears off and he drops. She settles him on his feet.

“Was that-” Garrus starts. Turian personnel don’t have cyanide pills, but he’s vaguely familiar with the concept. “Were you going to-”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t think so. But you scared me before I could decide.”

“Oh,” Garrus says. 

“It probably wouldn't have worked anyway,” Shepard says in the silence, after a moment. “The bugout balls, they hardly ever worked.”

Garrus says nothing to this. Shepard is being entirely truthful for once in her sorry life. She basically forgot about the damn thing. The Alliance stopped using them two months into production. She almost might have used the last one in existence. What a shame, she thinks, dryly, but she doesn't think Garrus would appreciate that particular joke yet. 

When he says “What a shame,” she's startled into a bark of laughter. Garrus looks up, his aggravated look half melted into amusement. Shepard relaxes in about ten different places. She may or may not be forgiven, but he isn't angry. No, Shepard thinks, with a twinge in her gut . Not angry. Afraid. 

And the metabolism, and the amp in her head, and the gut that chews up toxins in a matter of minutes. Another thing to point out to Garrus if he gets mopey: the stuff in the ball would have been metabolized real quick.  
Shepard shakes herself all over, locks it all up to deal with later. Not the time. 

“What are we doing here?” Shepard asks, tapping her knee. Right to the crux. Out of all the questions, this first, then, “What are they doing here?””

“Fear of a name-” Garrus starts primly, cut off Shepard’s “Cut that out, Vakarian!”

He chuckles anyway. Shepard’s never referenced any kind of turian literature, because she’s absurdly uneducated. There are a couple of decent human books, though, Not that any of them are Failures of My Android Servant.

“I can guess who might know the first one,” Garrus says. 

“The pilot?” Shepard asks. 

Garrus nods. “Her name is Addys Dieu. She's very nice, for a human.”

Shepard ‘mmm’s this. “And when would you have spoken to Addys Dieu?”

“Ah, Shepard,” he says. “Tone.”

Shepard ‘mmm’s again. “Two places I’m seeing that could have been the issue.”

“The ship’s nav comp and the relay,” Garrus says. 

“Right,” Shepard says. “And the nav comp is checked by the pilot, and the relay is...I don’t really know how relays work.” She shrugs. “They spit you out somewhere specific everytime, like a highway exit. So if it was the relay, was it a malfunction?”

Shepard frowns at that, sudden and sick. “I don’t like that one.”

“Me neither,” Garrus says. “But I assume you have other reasons.”

“Because there’s only the one relay in the system,” Shepard says. “Unless they came here the long way, they came from Earth, who knows when. And if this relay works, then they can go back out.”

Garrus whistles. “Gotcha. And if it’s the pilot, then is it intentional? Do we just have the shittiest, unluckiest lives in history?”

“I,” Shepard says thoughtfully, “am really wishing we told someone. Liara. Jack.”

“Zaeed,” Garrus says wistfully. 

“Well,” Shepard says. “If nothing else, it’s time for ET to phone home.”

The comm is on the bridge. Shepard is neither quick nor graceful, and she clatters down the narrow walkways in the lead, with Garrus close behind. The bridge is empty when they enter, and Shepard pokes at the comm, then lets Garrus take over with a huff of frustration.

“I don’t know…” Garrus trails off, examining the comm. “This is a sealed unit, right?”

“Should be,” Shepard says.

Garrus does something mysterious at the casing edge on the screen, prodding and muttering to himself, then slams it with the side of his fist. The casing pops off and smashes to the ground. Shepard jumps at the noise.  
“Doesn’t seem right, somehow,” Shepard observes. Garrus rummages around inside the unit, lifting up a bit of wire that’s spliced with another. He examines this, then slits it apart. After a moment, the screen lights up with a cheery emergency restart notification. 

“Huh,” Garrus says. “Someone doesn’t know much about wiring. That would have exploded the second we had any kind of power surge. Taken out half the ship.”

“The little genie in the comm unit tell you that?” Shepard asks.

Garrus snorts and reels the wire out of the unit, hauling up a blocky wedge. “No,” he says. “This is plastic explosive.”

“No thanks,” Shepard says. “Doubt that was an accident.”

“Ah,” Garrus says. “Don’t underestimate the layman.”

Shepard pulls up the screen on her omnitool. The security on the ship’s systems is no match for hacking programs honed on Reaper ships, and very quickly Shepard is able to view the cameras; no one has been on the bridge in the last two hours other than Addys Dieu, the pilot, and before that there is only groups of people at a time, no one else going near the comm system. Some of the footage is obscured with static, but it happens several times, and Shepard isn’t sure it’s from someone scrubbing the footage.

Strange, Shepard thinks, a bit sarcastically. The personnel information is unavailable. Not deleted, not missing, not incomplete, just wholesale ‘system error’. Unfortunate, that; as useful as it could be, she’d really like to see what the file has to say about her. 

Shepard turns at scuffing. Addys Dieu is in the entryway of the bridge, one leg still cocked back and half turned at the torso as if she’s trying to skitter out of sight.

“Dieu,” Shepard says, with great delight. “How kind of you to join us.”

“What’s that?” Dieu asks. To her credit, she sounds quite calm. 

“An explosive,” Shepard says. “In a sealed unit, that is mysteriously no longer sealed. And your comms aren’t working. Any other systems malfunctions I should know about?”

“Couldn’t tell you,” Dieu says. She takes a few steps onto the bridge, making up her mind, and stands close enough to be reasonable, but far enough to make a break for it. 

Shepard says, “I’m calling Alliance command, and I’m calling the Council. You’ll tell me what else in here is rigged to an explosive, if you don’t mind.”

She’s pulling out the Spectre voice, Garrus notices. About time. 

“I don’t know,” Dieu says.

“Addys Dieu,” Shepard muses. “You were an Alliance pilot?”

“No,” Dieu says, shifting her weight. “I worked with a private organization.” 

“Of course,” Shepard says. “Do you prefer Addys or Dieu? Yes. I’ve spent a lot time in this business, Dieu. You could say I have a knack for personnel.”

Dieu says nothing. Shepard nods. “I was struck earlier by how unsurprised you sounded.” 

“Ma’am?” 

“We went in like a peach but I don't know where we came out,” Shepard recites. They stand in silence for a long minute. 

Before Addys even starts to move, Shepard drives her elbow into Dieu’s gut, turns, and catches her in a headlock as she comes up. Dieu freezes. 

“Sensible,” Shepard says into Dieu’s ear. “I like that in a woman. Alright, easy now, down we go,” Shepard murmurs as she bears Dieu down under her weight. Dieu twists, reaching for Shepard,and gets a grapple and a knee to the jaw for her trouble. 

“No,” Shepard says, pressing her knee into Dieu’s back. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Nice,” Garrus says. She doesn’t look up in time to catch his appreciative glance, because the universe sometimes takes pity on a man and cuts him a break. 

“Thanks,” Shepard says. “It does feel a bit unsporting.”

Garrus ‘mm’s. “I could see that. Dieu.”

Dieu does not deign to respond. Shepard whistles. It’s always nice when she gets to work on someone with a spine. 

“Do you feel that was unsporting?” Shepard asks, moving so her hands are planted on Dieu’s shoulders. She doesn’t want to risk pressing too hard with her legs. That’s dangerous enough with someone used to their legs.

“What?” Dieu says. Shepard notes the tiniest tinge of hysteria. Very nice.

“I’m eighty pounds heavier than the average woman,” Shepard explains, adjusting her hands a bit more so that she isn’t grinding Dieu’s shoulder blades. “Me naked, and the woman in combat armor. Also, me without legs. I don’t actually know how heavy I am now. You can breathe fine, right?”

“Yes,” Dieu says. “What are you talking about!”

“Right, unpack,” Shepard says. “I’m asking if you felt that you had a fair chance. It feels unsportsmanlike to spar someone so much smaller.”

“No,” Dieu says, shrill and confused. “Yes! Are you interrogating me or not!”

“Hm,” Shepard says, glancing briefly at Garrus before keeping her eye steadily on Dieu. “Do you feel this is an interrogation, Vakarian?”

“No,” Garrus says promptly. “No one’s bleeding.”

“Naturally,” Shepard says. “I’m saving that for the good questions.”

“You could wrestle again,” Garrus says, with the air of one offering an excellent deal. “To be sure it was fair.”

“Nah,” Shepard says. “I’m getting kind of hungry.”

Garrus ambles around Dieu, dangling the plastic explosive like a piece of fancy jewelry. Shepard pictures it from Dieu’s view: the empty bridge, the disassembled comm, the slow clicking approach in the silence, and then the long legs, folding up and up and up, til they’re crouching and there are hands in her face now, hands with very long sharp points holding out a big explosive. One of the upsides of working with Garrus is his appreciation for a touch of the melodrama. 

“This is not,” Garrus says, softly, compelling the listener to lean closer, not that Dieu can, “an interrogation.”

“Ah,” Dieu squawks. Shepard digs a big harder with the heels of her hands.

“We know you booby-trapped the comm,” Garrus says, still soft, moving his hand closer until he’s just touching the edge of Dieu’s skin with a claw. “This is a courtesy. What else is rigged?”

“Nav,” Dieu yelps. “Just nav and comms! Let me up, I’m going to puke.”

Shepard doesn’t move, though Garrus lifts his hand out of the way so that Dieu can vomit without getting it on him. When she is finished, Shepard hauls her up, fishing a zip tie out of her pocket and locking Dieu’s hands together in front of her. Grimacing at the vomit, she also swabs out Dieu’s mouth with a napkin. 

“Napkins?” Garrus asks. 

“I’ve learned my lesson,” Shepard says. “They’re always handy.”

“There’s no point in calling,” Dieu blurts. “It won’t work.”

Shepard sighs. “Here was me, expecting some work.”

Garrus snorts. “We’ll see how well you managed to break it.” He lifts the explosive as a helpful visual aid. 

“I won’t tell you anything,” Dieu continues. Her eyes are a little too unfocused, Shepard judges. Definitely hysteria. She’s never known it to help, but she gives Dieu a good slap anyway. 

It doesn’t help, but it makes her feel better. 

Garrus is signing, very rapidly, behind Dieu’s back, that he is going to work on the comm unit and that Shepard had better get goddamn talking and get some goddamn information. One of the downsides of working with Garrus is that he isn’t afraid of her anymore.

‘Goddamn’, or his native equivalent, was a useful addition to the combat handsigns, though. 

‘Whatever, whatever’ gets less use, but Shepard assumes he remembers it. From the look on his face, he does. 

“So,” Shepard says, settling herself in front of Dieu, because she is quite comfortable in her ability to kick down a door, nevermind get out of the way quickly. “Tell me if I’m right. You have accomplices onboard. There was some kind of muckup and you sabotaged the systems out of fear you’d get caught-no? Let me think about that one.”

“I won’t tell you anything,” Dieu says again. Her face is quite expressive. Shepard turns to look over her shoulder, startled by one of the young scientists turning onto the bridge, holding up a fire extinguisher.

“Hey,” Shepard starts to say, and then everything goes wobbly. 

She works her mouth uselessly when she comes to, cotton mouthed and tasting bile. She rolls her head to one side, then the other, and sits up. Idiots one and two are nowhere in sight. Her wrists are tied, but the knot is easy to unpick with her teeth. She’s still on the bridge, and her omnitool says it’s been ten minutes.   
She wonders, sourly, if anyone will ever bother to calibrate doses for her cybernetics, and gets to her feet. She makes her staggering, swimming way to the turn, down the hall, and into the rec room, intending to get water before systematically tearing the ship apart.

“Of course,” Shepard says. Idiot one and Idiot two are in the rec room, arguing about what to do with the unconscious Spectre. They turn. The scientist kid is holding a gun. Karani, Shepard remembers in an inspired burst. 

Why the hell he thinks it’s a good idea to use a gun on a ship this size, Shepard has no idea. The hallway is to his back and the other hallway is to her back and on either side is vaccuum. She stands her ground in any case, hands open.

“What the hell,” Dieu says. “You said she’d be out for hours!”

“Metabolism,” Shepard says.

“What?” Karani says. “That was krogan tranquilizer.”

The room fills with the smell of ozone. Shepard dredges her biotics up from the depths of the tranquilizer haze, the blue snapping and spreading around her fingers in sticky slow wisps. 

“It is difficult,” Shepard says, calm, measured, “for many people to use their biotics in any effective way at first. There is no physical weight to them, but aim must be precise. They are often triggered by strong emotion, but control must be rigid. There is no increase in strength as one ages, but they don't weaken when the rest of the body does. Refinements in skill are possible, but hard for children, and adults generally don't have access to other educated biotics unless they are military, and accidents are more common than breakthroughs in the self taught.”

No one says anything. Shepard grins, a quicksilver flash across her mouth. She lifts her glowing hands, followed by their rapt eyes. The nimbus spreads, the crackling audible clear across the room. They are still, watching her hands, wreathed in light. 

Garrus cracks his IV pole into the side of Dieu’s head, using the momentum to slam Karani across the face, tubes and bags fluttering. They go down, Dieu like a stone and Karani gibbering until Shepard hits him hard with the side of her hand. 

“Spirits,” Garrus says. “You really can monologue.” 

“Biotics 101 textbook introduction. Verbatim,” Shepard says, pleased. 

“Would you say your aim is precise?” he asks, prodding Dieu with one foot. She doesn’t stir, and he grunts with satisfaction.

“Yes,” Shepard says promptly. “Oh, yes.”

Garrus chuckles. He pries the IV needle out of his elbow, swearing. Shepard busies herself zip-tying Dieu and Karani’s wrists to the IV pole and then lodging the pole firmly with her shoes. She considers their limp forms, then lays them side by side and puts their hands together, linking their fingers. Nothing wrong with a judicious adjustment, she thinks. She paces a circle around them, arms crossed. 

“Good enough for government work,” she says. 

“So,” Garrus says, with a casual air. “Triggered by strong emotions, you said.”

“Yes,” Shepard says, straightening her back. She runs her tongue over her teeth and tries, “Have you suddenly manifested biotics? You know I’d teach you whatever you wanted.”

She wants to swallow her tongue at the look on his face, but he doesn’t respond to it. Instead, Garrus says “I was wondering why you threw me earlier,” and leaves it at that.

She extinguishes the biotics bleeding light around her hands. She thumps Garrus on the back, gently for his poor sick self, and gestures to their prisoners.

“I see movement,” she sings.

She gives herself a good mental shake to get into character, then crouches over Karani and lifts his head by his bangs.

“We are done with this nonsense,” she says, using the Spectre voice to the fullest degree. The kid’s skin pales about twelve shades. 

“I don’t-” he says.

“Uh-uh,” Shepard says, jerking one hand across her throat. “Right now. Who is paying you? What is going on here?”

“You are,” Karani chokes. “At least-I thought-”

“Shut up,” Dieu mumbles, looking like she is still mostly unconscious.

“Ah,” Shepard says, like a man in the dark that sees a crack of light. “I see. How could I forget? Thank you for reminding me.”

She knocks Karani out again with a headbutt this time. She hopes it doesn’t give him brain damage. 

She zip ties them again, several times, just to be safe, and stands with Garrus just outside the rec room.

“My clone,” Shepard says flatly.

“Makes sense,” Garrus says, although he sounds as burnt-out stunned as Shepard does. “How do you translate being a clone into a marketable skill?”

“Impersonation,” Shepard says. “But I don’t think that’s the case. Dieu knew I wasn’t her employer.”

“I was thinking more ‘orchestration of crisis’,” Garrus says.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quicker update this time around because I had part of this written before the last chapter somehow? As always, feedback is appreciated.

For all the variety of the Hierarchy’s lifestyles, Graene Langenauer has long been an aberration. The largest active space force in the galaxy, the military and the state, fifteen years of compulsory service as civic duty, and technology enough for the Hierarchy’s heavy gaze to reach to the farthest ends of the galaxy: Graene is stewed in all sorts of stiff-necked turian stereotypes. A pacifist married to a human is, Graene is sure, not what her parents expected when they looked at their sweet infant child.

That is not Graene’s problem. 

She is Macedynian, after all. Are they not the diamond pendant in the necklace of the colony worlds? Are they not the example hung before the children in their first days of boot camp? (Are they not responsible for a significant fraction of turian scientists and award-winners of all kinds?) (Were.)

The military is the backbone of the Hierarchy. Macedyn is the cerebrospinal fluid. (Was.) Graene is the cerebrospinal fluid being shunted into the stomach because now there is hydrocephalus. 

She is not, however, a disappointment. She is not any kind of black sheep, or dirty family secret. Her mother the praetor and her father the botanist are both very proud of her. She has a respectable profession, and she is rising in the field, even on the human side of the practice. Her three patents and several papers co-written with Ayelet on interspecies prosthetic technology make that easy. The Hierarchy is rigid, but there is always room for movement (when it is to the benefit of more than the individual.)

Her career is promising and well-paid. She has a documented history of innovation and a solid background in industry development. She comes from an excellent family. Her health is superb (and her figure is ideal.) Graene is quite familiar with the way that turian men sound when they’re overfond of someone, and those noun declensions in several languages give her immediate cold shivers. 

This is why she lingers outside the rec room, at the sound of just that, she tells herself. Qotu, not Imperan, which tells her that it’s Garrus Vakarian and not a recording of the news broadcast. (He really has such a rich voice for a man, and it’s unsettlingly similar to one of the anchors she prefers.) His declensions are, Graene decides, actually almost sweet in how earnestly warm they are. After a moment, she steels herself and steps in.

It takes her another moment to see what is going on, and yet another to process it. Two of the crew-Dieu, the young pilot that likes tea, and Karani, the even younger scientist with the interesting employment history- are zip-tied to a human sized IV pole that is still dripping fluids from tubes and hung with bags. They are looking nauseated but unharmed. Vakarian is pouring himself a cup of coffee and talking over one shoulder. Shepard is sitting in a chair, and the room is so filled with her presence that Graene takes a step back. 

Shepard is a good size for a human woman (and likes to talk about it) and Graene is on the smaller side for a turian woman, so they are fairly close to the same size. On the one hand, Graene is faster and Shepard has legs that detach. On the other, Shepard is a biotic, a powerful one, and Graene is not. Shepard also has enough force of personality for a dozen people of any species. (So turian! Even the pacifist considers the odds.)

Graene is impressed with the reality of Shepard. She’s got more wallop in her voice in person. She also doesn’t appear to notice that Vakarian is talking to her like they’re life partners with a dozen children and another on the way. (How sweet! She must warn Vakarian about the hair. It gets everywhere.) 

“Oh, my, what have we here,” Graene says mildly, in Qotu. Seeing the general incomprehension, she repeats it fluidly in English. 

“My clone has a few friends on this ship,” Shepard says. (Clone?) “And Lord knows what else, or where that fucker is hanging out now.”

“Am I the only one here that doesn’t speak English?” Garrus demands. Shepard’s omnitool repeats this in English, which Graene watches, interested despite herself.

“Yes,” Shepard says and gets up to pat him on the shoulder, then take his cup of coffee. “It’s alright. Poor thing.”

At Graene’s expression, Shepard says, “Brain trauma! We’re seeing how it goes.”

“Ah,” Graene says. “That seems...reasonable.”

“I used to,” Garrus says mournfully. “I understand it fine.”

“When did you stop speaking English?” Graene asks politely. (The war, surely. So terrible for so many people.)

“Yesterday,” he says, and pours himself another cup of coffee.

“You know,” Shepard says, right into Graene’s awkward silence. “You people really should have considered putting someone in charge. Civilians,” she says, shaking her head. “Always so ready to try and work together.”

“Committees do have their appeal,” Graene says. 

Shepard concedes this with a tilt of her head. “Still,” she says, and jerks a thumb at the two on the floor. “It might be easier to deal with your demolitions team here, if there was one person to talk to about it.”

“Demolitions?” Graene repeats. “I speak English fairly well, I know, but demolitions is probably not the right word.”

“Oh, no,” Shepard says. (She’s grinning like she’s having a paroxysm of delight. No wonder everyone is so scared of her.)

“Oh,” Graene says.

Vakarian takes a block off the counter and holds it up for Graene’s inspection. He says, “This look familiar?”

“Yes,” Graene says. “Smells like what we used in controlled demo in boot camp.”

“Right on,” Vakarian says. “Now I know we don’t have much imagination, but don’t you wonder how a block of explosive ended up in your comms system? There was a bit in the nav desk too.”

“I would think,” Graene says, a bit stiff, “that someone put it there.”

“Oh, yes,” Vakarian says, sounding like Shepard. (Delight! What is wrong with these two? Who enjoys finding sabotage?) He says, “Oh, yes, someone absolutely put it there. Exhibit one. Exhibit two.”

He nudges each exhibit in question with his foot. Neither of them say anything. (Poor kids look like they want to vomit.)

“Also,” Shepard says. “If we can figure out what they did to the security footage, we probably have it on tape. And we ought to check other systems. I’d put other irons in the fire, myself.”

“Maybe,” Graene says, “I should tell my wife. If you’ll excuse me for a moment?”

Graene slips out, rubbing the underside of her fringe as she trots along. Ayelet is not going to be happy about this. (Understandable, but unpleasant.)

She finds Ayelet on the third try, surveying her domain in medbay-the metal table, the cot, the synthesizer, the tablet still showing Anticonvulsants for Xenoorganisms 2nd Ed. (Alright, alright, Ayelet isn’t that kind of doctor, but she knows how to work the synthesizer and ship’s database had an info packet. Even better than an MRI!) 

“Hello,” Ayelet says over her shoulder, with one of her rare crooked smiles, as Graene places a hand on Ayelet’s back and hooks her chin over the shoulder. 

“Hopefully the patient hasn’t died of an overdose,” she says, seeing the look on Graene’s face. “No? Has he seized again?”

“No,” Graene says. “But he also tore the IVs out of his arm, so I don’t know what’s in his system-listen, there’s a situation.”

“Sounds delightful,” Ayelet drawls, turning around to kiss Graene on the side of her head. “What’s this situation?”

Graene sums up the issue in the rec room, with a few descriptive hand gestures, and leads Ayelet back. 

“Well,” Ayelet says upon entering. She tilts her head to one side, absorbing Shepard smashing her shoulder into Karani’s gut, rolling as they hit the ground, and bundling him over so she can hold his arms back. She grips so hard that Graene can see her fingers blanch. (Ayelet is so calm, always. Graene would love her for that alone.)

“Bite me again, you bastard. Remember who you’re dealing with,” Shepard hisses. Her legs are at a strange angle that Graene finds deeply concerning, like the prosthetics’ seat is slipping. She still looks better than Vakarian, who is clearly woozy and exhausted. 

Karani struggles, until Shepard tightens her grip. He squeaks. 

“Good,” Shepard says without looking up. “You’re here. Take that one. You can help me lock them in a cabin and then you two can keep an eye on them.”

Shepard waits for Ayelet to take hold of Dieu and her IV pole, and they set off to put their prisoners in their new brig-one of the cabins, the only place on the ship that locks externally, and Shepard knows how to disable the internal lock. 

“Please be patient,” Graene says over the shipwide intercom, watching them go. “We will release the emergency bulkheads soon, the problem is being resolved.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t volunteer in Ayelet’s place,” Vakarian says.

“I’m a pacifist,” Graene says. “In the sense that I let other people do the violence for me.”

“I’m not sure that’s what a pacifist is,” Vakarian says. “A turian pacifist. Interesting.”

“I suppose,” Graene says. “It’s really a political stance. I just find it difficult to...My homeworld, Macedyn, nuked itself during the invasion. Detonated every single nuclear weapon on-planet.”

“Plenty of survivors,” Vakarian says, eyes gleaming. “Priority in post-war reconstruction, both funding and personnel. Thriving resettlement, despite the craters in the nuclear garrisons.”

Graene flares her mandibles and tucks them back. “Yes. Luckily.”

“Not luck,” Vakarian says, but doesn’t press it. “But it’s not much of a reason.”

“Most of those survivors were off-planet,” Graene says. “Including my parents.”

“Mine weren’t,” Vakarian says. “Palaven.”

“I’m sorry,” Graene says. She doesn’t ask more. (So many horrible ways for that story to end. So few good ones. She’s seen the pictures.)

“Thank you,” Vakarian says. “My father is fine, last I heard. I don’t know about anyone else.” He wiggles his mandibles. “I don’t even know if my hometown is still there.”

“You were on Menae?” (Seen the pictures from Menae, too.)

“I was,” Vakarian says. “With Primarch Victus, until Shepard came flapping her ‘Help Wanted’ sign.”

“I wasn’t on the ground for most of the war,” Graene says. “Ayelet was working with the Alliance, and I haven’t been active duty since I got my degree, so I didn’t see what most of it looked like up close. They’re still burying the bodies on Macedyn.”

“They’re still burying bodies in lots of places.”

“On Macedyn the bodies have radiation burns,” Graene says. “Not all of them, no. There was time for evacuation. But there are plenty. I understand the rationale behind nuking Macedyn, and I do believe it was the only option they felt they had.”

“The war went very badly,” Vakarian says, like he’s ripping out his teeth with his claws. 

“It did,” Graene says. “The nukes were the best we could do. I don’t want that to be the case in the future. Not to the extent that I would have tried diplomacy with a Reaper, but we can make better choices.”

“On one of the human colony worlds,” Vakarian says, “Mars or Mercury, the red one, the Alliance pulled out. The world isn’t terraformed. No Alliance, with a war on, and no shipping at all between planets. Some of the bodies have teeth marks.”

“I’d heard of that,” Graene says. “I’m not saying people don’t do desperate things to survive. It’s that the choices mean different things to us. It’s easy to be good, do the right thing, in peacetime. On that colony...who knows, maybe the right choice is to let yourself starve to death instead of eating someone you’ve worked with for the last decade.”

“There isn’t really a right choice, in situations with stakes like the war.”

“No,” Graene agrees. “I told you, it’s not to that extent. I’m still a turian, Vakarian. War is a reality and a necessity. But if you only have a hammer, then everything is a nail.”

“Ah,” Vakarian says. “A philosopher. Well. You’ve got me as far as the necessity of other options in the toolbelt.”

“The other options are questions for smarter people than me,” Graene says. “But after I saw what my homeworld looked like, I don’t want to see that anywhere else.”

“Unless there’s a Reaper invasion.”

“Reaper invasion,” Graene says. “Rachni invasion, et cetera. Not my problem.”

“The turian cultural tendency toward confronting every issue with a handgun,” Vakarian says.

Graene barks laughter. “Is that from Shepard?”

“Of course,” Vakarian says. “She’s very judgemental.”

“And what does Shepard confront everything with?”

“Her forehead,” Vakarian says glumly. (Sounds like he should have a beer in his hand.) 

“How krogan of her.”

“She’s essentially the adoptive mother of a krogan,” Vakarian says. At the look on Graene’s face, he holds up a hand and says, “No shit. Really. He’s a pretty nice kid, for a krogan. Urdnot Grunt. Might be a father himself now, actually, the way things were going on Tuchanka.”

 

“Nice kid,” Graene repeats.

“He lit a patrol car on fire on the Citadel,” Vakarian says. “Shepard dressed him down like a drill sergeant.”

“On fire,” Graene says. “On a station.”

“It lost some of the effect, because she smashed through the floor in a restaurant not long after,” Vakarian says, looking off into the distance like he’s lost in memory. (Maybe an act, but he’s smiling, the tiniest bit.)

“The floor,” Graene says.   
“Sure,” Vakarian says. “That was a long day.”

“Huh,” Graene says. “Shepard doesn’t strike me as the sort of person to commit willful destruction.”

“Guess you never know.”

“Mm,” Graene concedes. “I wasn’t sure how Ayelet would take the interspecies thing, but after a while...you can tell.”

“How did you know?” Vakarian asks. He sounds tentative, maybe worried. 

Graene folds her fingers together and thinks. “Ayelet spoke four languages when we met. English, Hebrew, a couple of others.”

“Most humans speak at least one,” Vakarian says.

Graene says, “She speaks five now. Imperan. I caught her practicing one night when we went to dinner. That’s how I knew.”

“Isn’t that sweet,” Vakarian says. 

Graene shrugs.

“It’s sweet,” Vakarian says. “Thanks.”

“You’re the one teaching her Quto,” Graene says as he gets up. Vakarian halts and stares down; Graene meets his eyes steadily, gesturing him back down. She says, “So you’ll have to find your own way.”

“Thanks,” Vakarian says again, this time like he’s got a mouthful of sand. (Has he not heard himself talking to Shepard?)

“I don’t think anyone else knows,” Graene says. “Well, Ayelet does. And probably Karani and Dieu. And...those two engineers from Taetrus, they speak Quto there. But Shepard definitely doesn’t.”

Rubbing the bridge of his nose, Vakarian sits back down. “Am I that obvious?”

“Well,” Graene says, looking to the side and back. “Yes.”

“Ah,” Vakarian says. He sighs a long sigh out his nose. “You’re sure Shepard doesn’t know?”

“As far as I can tell,” Graene says. She elects not to include her opinions on Shepard’s half of the equation. “It’s a language trick. English doesn’t have the declensions.”

“My declensions?” Vakarian asks. “What the hell is a declension?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Graene says. “It’s not just the way you talk to her, it’s the way you talk to her.”

“Right,” Vakarian says with another sigh. “Of course. Word endings? Tone? Both?”

“Got it,” Graene says. “Both.”

“Thanks,” Vakarian says and puts his head in his hands. 

Graene trills a little to herself, part amusement and part pity. (Poor bastard.) Vakarian makes a noise from his gut, much louder and rasping, before he catches himself and the crescendoing drone cuts off abruptly. 

“I haven’t done that since I was a teenager,” he mumbles into his hands. He’s making low rippling noises with his mandibles, and his voice wobbles with it. 

“We were research partners in a lab class. She was finishing her doctorate, I was just auditing,” Graene says, getting up to pour two cups of coffee, gaze flickering past the doorway. She sets one beside Vakarian and drinks from the other. “Sort of an exchange student, you know? Towards the end of the semester, I asked her if she wanted to get drinks with me, and when she said yes, I was stridulating so loud I thought she might have gone deaf.”

“Spirits,” Vakarian says, peeking up from his fingers, then descending on the coffee like a vengeful ghost. “That must have been mortifying.”

“Aliens,” Graene says, dispensing wisdom. “Ayelet didn’t know any better. She thought it was charming. Humans apparently don’t really do defense displays.”

“I thought that was what all the smiling was about,” Vakarian confesses. “I kept thinking Shepard was about to go for my throat.”

“Romantic.”

“Actually she was shit-scared of me,” Vakarian says. “She wasn’t going for anyone’s throat.”

“Shit scared? Of you?”

“Sure,” Vakarian says and does a big luxurious stretch, like he’s a prime specimen of a turian. (He certainly isn’t bad. The scars, the fringe, the clan, the rank. It’s a combination, alright.) “Not exactly a green recruit, our Shepard, but not the Spectre, either. Told me later I was the first turian she worked up close with.”

“Really,” Graene says, trilling again, all amusement this time. “And what did you think of our Shepard?”

“Tiny?” Vakarian offers. “I liked the color of her armor, this nice bright green. She had a lot more hair then. Kept it in all these intricate braids, or whatever. Hell of a gun. Real big gun. She had legs. Ate like a machine, but a nice waist, even for a human. She smiled, all the time, constantly. Best thing about her. Well. Second best, after the gun.”

“She still smiles,” Graene says. “Not constantly, but she does.”

“She does,” Vakarian says. “So do I. Turns out I have a sense of humor.”

“Not a very good one.”

“It does the job.”

“You know,” Graene says, taking a sip of coffee. “You could just ask.”

“No,” Vakarian says instantly. “Been there. Did that. No thank you.”

“Sure, sure,” Graene says. 

After a minute, Vakarian says, “There’s...history.”

“Obviously.”

“You know what I mean,” Vakarian says. “There was a one night thing, life or death situation. Next morning she kicked me out. Never mentioned it again. I’m not just asking anything.”

“You’re in deep, Vakarian,” Graene says. 

“You’re telling me, Langenauer,” Vakarian says. 

“So,” Graene says.

“Please don’t ask.”

“How is Shepard in bed?” Graene asks. 

Vakarian groans and puts his head back in his hands. 

“Good? Bad?” Graene prods. “Come on. Tell the doctor. Tell the nosy doctor.”

“That’s an incredibly inappropriate question,” Vakarian mumbles. “Good. Great. Obviously. If she was shit in bed do you think I’d still have this problem?”

“Reasonable,” Graene says, and finishes her coffee. She elects, again, not to mention that Shepard has been standing in the doorway, frozen, for the last half hour. (Shepard’s chalk white. Poor bastard. It was a compliment.)

Shepard makes a noise deep in her throat, and Vakarian whips around and out of his seat like a runner’s pistol has been shot off behind his head. 

“That’s my cue,” Graene says brightly and slips out of the room, bustling off to security detail. (Ayelet is going to love this.) (Ayelet is going to tell her that was unethical.)

There must be something wrong with her legs, Shepard thinks, because she isn’t moving, but Graene is gone before Shepard can say anything, and her mouth isn’t moving either. Her hands are tingling. Her mouth tastes like metal. 

This doesn’t feel like any kind of fear Shepard has felt before, but it doesn’t feel good, either. 

Garrus is on his feet, clearly unsteady, and Shepard is struck with worry he’s about to seize again, but the moment passes and he drops back into the chair. 

His face is still an awful study in sick shock. He doesn’t say anything. His mouth stays open, his mandibles hang slack, and his legs are limp against the chair. 

“I didn’t want to be rude,” Shepard manages. 

He doesn’t say anything. 

“What don’t I know?” Shepard asks. 

“I think you can guess,” Garrus says. He runs one hand up and down a mandible, making that cicada noise from his gut again, but much quieter. It sounds like a drill bit on steel. 

“Seems like everyone else did before me,” Shepard says. She takes one step, then another, and slogs her way into the chair Graene left. “Garrus. What don’t I know?”

“Shepard,” Garrus says. He could be pleading, if his tone were any different. Please don’t seize, Shepard thinks madly, this really isn’t the time. 

“Tell me,” Shepard says, relentless. Calm, she tells herself, we’re going for calm here. Her heartbeat is making her nauseous. 

“You heard...all of that?”

“Yes,” Shepard says. 

“Oh, hell,” Garrus says. 

“Don’t faint on me, Vakarian,” Shepard says. “You might be overworked.”

“I might be,” he says. “Can we...not talk about this here?”

“Sure,” Shepard says, and they make their slow, aching way to the cabin. Shepard drops onto her bunk and removes her legs with a sigh of relief. The stumps are red, but thankfully not swollen. Garrus sits on the edge of his own bunk, wishing for something to do with his hands. If only this ship needed something calibrated.

“I don’t know how to talk about this with you,” Garrus says.

“Take your time,” Shepard says, rolling onto her back and closing her eyes. “I told Langenauer we’re resting before the fun starts. Don’t know about you, but I’m damn tired.”

“Yeah,” Garrus says. “Damn tired. Shaky.”

Shepard cackles. 

“For the record,” she says, “I have no problem with the interspecies thing.”

“Oh,” Garrus says.

“I didn’t a few years ago,” Shepard points out. 

“You did kick me out,” Garrus says.

“Not because you’re an alien,” Shepard says. “We were blowing off stress. I had things to do.”

“I see,” Garrus says. Nothing he hasn’t thought of before, but not something that makes the memory feel any better. “Not that I was in love with you or anything, but it wasn’t great. I don’t want it to be like that again.”

“Sorry,” Shepard says. “I mean that. But it was different then.”

Then, drawing on the Shepard that lurched through the Citadel with internal bleeding, Shepard says, “Come over here and lay down already.”

“You sure?” Garrus asks, but he’s on his feet. When she nods without opening her eyes, he settles himself on the edge of the bunk. She doesn’t move closer, but she doesn’t move away. She thinks about the weird intensity of seeing him in the last few months, the half-started conversations, and she reaches out one hand to his shoulder, yawning. 

“Don’t worry,” Shepard says. “It’s not just you.”

“That’s good,” Garrus says. “That’s good.”

“I don’t know what I’m working with,” Shepard says. “Or if it’s what you’re working with.”

“We can figure it out,” Garrus says. Before the ship lighting ticks over to night dim, they’re both asleep.


	7. Chapter 7

Dieu and Karani crack like eggshells. Whatever the clone is paying these people, Shepard hopes she got a receipt. It spills out, so fast that it’s either terrified honesty or incredible lying skills, everything they know. It’s not much: the clone hired them, told them to plant the two bombs. The ship’s arrival in this system was accidental, because Dieu is an inexperienced pilot and let the autopilot take them along the most recent route. Neither of them know anything about the Reaper presence, but Dieu blurts something about “She knew”. 

Shepard maintains her composure until she’s relocked the cabin behind her, leaving the prisoners with breakfast trays, and then she kicks the wall hard enough to jar her stump. 

“She’s using my name,” she tells Garrus. “She’s using my fucking name.” 

“How does she know it?”

“Lord knows,” Shepard says, scrubbing her face. “I told her to go make a life for herself!”

“It’s a life,” Garrus says and shrugs at her expression. “I didn’t say it was a good one. Did you get anything else useful?”

“I got their life stories,” Shepard says. “Didn’t even have to make a threat. I think she pulled these two off the sidewalk and tossed ‘em in space. Dieu is too terrified to even stand near a porthole.”

“She sounds like a credit to her line of work,” Garrus says.

“I’m really not sure she even graduated,” Shepard says. “She talks like a first year flight academy student.”

“I’m sure the clone doesn’t have your people skills,” Garrus says.

“I have excellent people skills,” Shepard says. “People tell me all sorts of things.”

“Do they?”

“For instance,” Shepard says. “The clone was the last person to come to this system. Neither of our new friends knows what she did to the relay, but that’s how we ended up here.”

“And nothing came out of that relay,” Garrus says.

“As far as we know, anyway,” Shepard says. “It’s possible, but very unlikely, I think.”

“So,” Garrus says. “She’s still in the system. Dodging Reaper ships?”

“Or on one,” Shepard says. “Can’t count out the possibility.”

“Or she came here for another reason,” Garrus says. “Coincidences do happen, Shepard.”

“They do,” Shepard concedes. “Seems unlikely to me, though I can’t see the connection.”

“Maybe she’s been indoctrinated the whole time?”

“I truly cannot stand that woman,” Shepard says. 

“I'm wondering,” Garrus says, “what we might be missing here. What's the connection? Why now?” 

“Who hired these two?” Shepard adds. “I’ll have to ask Langenauer.”

“Unless,” Garrus says,and stops.

Shepard raises her eyebrows. “Unless the Langenauers are part of it?”

“It's’ possible,” Garrus says, reluctantly. 

Awfully long reach, in that case, for the clone to have her nasty little fingers just that one degree back, for that long. Shepard ‘s been seeing Ayelet for physical therapy since she was a day out of the coma. Graene’s been doing the prosthetics since Shepard gave up on the wheelchair. Graene's advised on modifications to the house, Ayelet on adjustment and daily routines and exercises. 

Too close for comfort, that. Too many levers on Shepard's head, on her recovery. Took many places for interference. Too much familiarity, too: Ayelet saw Shepard’s incoherent raving about the Citadel falling, Shepard’s hysterical tears when she tried to stan, how long it took her to work past her aphasia.

She tries not to think about that period of time much. It was like freefall, lifting the blanket and not understanding, and then being told ‘you screamed, even in the coma, so much that we had to move you and rotate your nurses’. Not worse than overhearing a nurse say you should have starved to death weeks before anyone found you, but not something a person can linger on for long. 

Just for a moment, Shepard can smell the rot in the rubble, thirty three days under the station, long after the cries have stopped in the distance. 

Shepard shivers once, all down her back, like a dog shaking off water. She wants to take off her legs and scrub down the stumps with bleach. She wants to peel off her skin. 

She was under the Citadel for three months. It was damp. She doesn't remember much else, a small mercy that Shepard thanks god for every day. What she does remember - the child, the Crucible, Anderson, the hallway on the Citadel, the long fall in terrible pain - is more than enough.

Another upside to working with Garrus: he's seen the doctor‘s reports, been to most of her appointments. He doesn't ask questions about it. Shepard knows very little about what happened to him, but she returns the favor. 

She doesn't like to wonder how he felt in London. Having any kind of emotional attachment to someone who takes direct hiTs from weapons meant for orbital bombardment can't be easy. 

And she was more or less dead, again. She doesn’t want to know how that felt, either. 

“Maybe,” Shepard says. “They're very...familiar by now for that, though.”

“Your clone had a thing for betrayal,” Garrus says. 

“Point,” Shepard says. “But it's been awhile. Who knows what she's like?”

“You mean like maybe she knits?”

“Christ, no. She's my clone.”

“So, more like maybe she works part time with a bomb squad?” Garrus asks. Shepard laughs. 

“I can't believe she's using my goddamn name,” she says. “‘Shepard’ seems like fair game,but get your own first name.”

“I guess she couldn't really go by ‘Goddamn Nuisance’.”

Shepard says “Did we get nav running? I want to check the signatures on that other ship.”

“Yeah, I think so. If the Langenauers didn't touch anything.”

“Should be fine,” Shepard says and pulls up the readouts with her omnitool. Nav comes up no problem. The comp is keeping its attention on the identified Reaper ship as much as it can, but they're keeping the planet between them and the Reaper is curiously passive. It hasn't moved other than the projected drifting. The other ship is a funny looking mutant of different energy and electrical signatures, and the identity beacon is off. It’s zipping all over the system, but it isn't hailing them or scanning them. 

“What the hell is this thing?” Shepard asks, flipping the display so Garrus can see while it loads on his omnitool. 

“A ship,” Garrus says. “Does any of that come up in the database?”

“Salarian engine,” Shepard says. “Some energy weapon, unidentified origin or use. That's it.”

“Damn,” Garrus says. 

Shepard rubs her forehead. She's ready to trade an arm for a few marines; she’s done more work with less help, but the help knew what they were doing.

She's got Garrus, to start. She has two medical people and six assorted scientists and other professionals of questionable loyalty. She has two proven untrustworthy moles locked in a room. There is the sorting of who can be trusted in the crew, there is keeping guard on Dieu and Karani, there is hunting down the clone, there is keeping the ship away from the Reaper, there is regular shipboard tasks, there is finding a way out of the system. Some can be delegated to the ship’s computers. Most can't.

First things. Backup. 

Shepard makes her way to the bridge, where they trade with the Langenauers - who go cheerfully, leaving scattered parts and a working comm unit - and Shepard punches up the comm buoy for the station at Charon. The connection buzzes and hums through the relay, then whatever comm buoys are working. Shepard almost bursts into relieved tears when a man’s face comes up on the screen.

“Who is using this channel -” the man starts, ready to launch into a tirade, when Shepard rattles off the last verification code she knows.

“That’s eight months out of date,” the man says. 

“Sorry,” Shepard says. “I'm retired.”

“Commander Shepard?”

“Sure am,” Shepard says, squinting when the man crosses himself. 

“Sorry ma’am,” he says hastily. “You just...usually have bad news.”

“Right,” Shepard says. She tunes out Garrus snickering and says, “Gimme the ranking officer, please.”

She'd be lying if she said she didn't love watching the scramble that inevitably follows something like this: is clearly Commander Shepard, whose word is inviolate and had the ear of anyone important, but procedure is strongly ingrained in these kids and this isn't procedure. This one breaks fast, though.

The ranking officer at Charon Station is quick to understand once his disbelief fades. Shepard is off the comm quickly, with a promise to look into it and do whatever they can. The conversation is over so quickly that Shepard reels, wondering how things might have gone if people listened to her like this a few years ago. She also nurses a nasty suspicion that she’s being humored. 

Garrus spends some time cramming up the sick resentment in his gut. No need. There is absolutely no need. Either his parents and sister are fine and he’ll see them when this is wrapped up, or they aren’t and the timing makes no difference. 

His mother made it off the planet. He knows that much. He spoke to his father not all that long ago. Surely they’re fine.

But there are some comm buoys working. Surely at least one can reach Palaven, and why hasn’t he heard from anyone?

Will his mother remember him?

He knots his fingers tightly together. He breathes deeply a few times. He thinks of nothing. None of it helps. The dread that's been at the back of his head is tightening his throat. He can't breathe. He can't see. The room sparkles and his hands start to jerk. 

An eternity of helpless twitching passes. The room comes back into focus. He still can't breathe, and now his headache is back. 

“Shepard,” he gasps. “Help.”

She's switching off the comm, still wiping her face, but she hurries over to kneel beside him. 

“Did you have a seizure?” She asks. He twitches one mandible. His throat is squeezed shut. 

“C’mon, big guy,” she says, and kneels there until he’s breathing normally again. 

“I’m kicking out a window,” Garrus says. “There’s no air on this ship.”

Shepard barks a laugh, but it’s unsteady as hell. She pats him on the shoulder.

“Want to stand up?” she asks.

“No,” Garrus says. “I’m going to take a breather. Check out the floor tiles for a bit.”

“Sure thing,” Shepard says, and moves from kneeling to sitting. “So. They’re working their magic on whatever remnant command structure is at Charon and reaching out to anyone they can think of. Maybe if we sit tight this will take care of itself.”

Garrus wiggles his mandibles, laughing, a little bitterly. “Shepard, we both know who they’re going to ask if they have any trouble.”

Shepard whistles. “You have a point.”

“Besides,” Garrus says, “I think we’ve learned by now not to rely on help.”

“Yeah,” Shepard says. She links her fingers together and stretches until her elbows and shoulders crack and then shakes it out. 

“I hate when you do that,” Garrus observes. “It’s weird. It’s scary.”

“Cracking joints?” Shepard asks, and cracks her wrist. “It’s fine.”

“I really don’t think they’re supposed to send like that.”

“Mmhmm,” Shepard says, and cracks the other wrist. “Luckily for you, I don’t have any knees to pop.”

Garrus shivers delicately. 

“You’re going over there, aren’t you,” Garrus says. 

“Yes,” Shepard says. “Alone, this time.”

“I want to argue with you,” he says. “I can think of some good reasons not to. But.”

“Seizures,” Shepard agrees. “I know Langenauer isn’t exactly...an expert in the field. But I’m not taking you away from the only person that has the vaguest idea of how to treat whatever is going on with you.”

“And,” Garrus says. “You don’t want me to stop you from whatever miracle you think you’re going to pull off.”

Shepard laughs. “And I’ll want you with me if I go planetside again.”

“Naturally,” Garrus says. “Don’t bring me onto a ship, where I’ve spent most of my adult life. But do bring me onto the planet with wildlife that may or may not trigger seizures.”

She thinks, briefly, to their conversation this morning-

(“My legs weren't attached to my body when they found me,” Shepard mutters. “I don't remember, because I was already in a coma, but i was in surgery for hours. Doctors kept telling me they didn't know how I wasn’t necrotic.”

Garrus says, “Can I see?”

He's seen the stumps before, but Shepard obliges and skins off her pants. The best part of no legs is that it takes half a second to get undressed. The stumps are all healed over now, but still sensitive. Shepard yelps when Garrus touches the end of one and he snatches his hands back. 

“I hate them,” Shepard says, casually, looking at the stumps. “I keep thinking I'll wake up and have my legs back. For a while I had dreams that Cerberus got their hands on me again and rebuilt me.”

“Well,” Garrus says, examining without touching now, “They're not awful. And I can't say I prefer that half starved look you’re starting to come out of.”

“Nah,” Shepard says. “Me either. My joints hurt all the time.”

“According to this,” Garrus says, lifting the wrist with Ayelet’s mysterious machine, “I had three seizures in my sleep. Ayelet said she’s worried they might be permanent.” 

“I suppose none of us would know,” Shepard says. She shifts a little, so Garrus can sees the stumps better. “Whatever that thing was, it did a number on you, alright.” 

“It’s not an amputation, but I'm not much of a fan.”

“I didn't recognize you,” Shepard says. “I knew I knew you, but I had no idea who you were, and it was absolutely terrifying. I didn't remember who I was until like the week after that.”

“I knew you had memory loss,” Garrus says. “You never said anything, but it was very weird.”)

-and she grins. 

“Yeah,” she says. “Exactly that. And you’ll thank me for it.”

“Thank you, Shepard,” Garrus says dryly. 

Shepard goes, then, to pack a bag, to gather supplies, and Garrus makes his wobbling way down to Ayelet and Graene. 

She hovers, furtive, around the other shuttle, feeling guilty for not signing anything out or telling anyone. Civilian ship, she tells herself. Secret emergency mission. No captain. No one to ask. It takes a bit of dithering, but she gets herself to strap into the shuttle, unclamp, and pull away from the ship. No one stops her or tries to hail the shuttle. Shepard’s head swims a little; on one hand, there’s the vertigo of going from ship artigrav to shuttle artigrav, that fades after a few seconds. On the other, this is all moving far faster than Shepard is used to. 

No interference. No one asking questions, or setting up roadblocks. She can’t see the Reaper ship, motionless on the other side of the planet at last check, but the weird mutant ship is fairly close, as close goes in space. She can see it out the windshield-such a funny, archaic term to use in space, but that’s how she’s always thought of it-and she sighs a little at the nice new ship. Always a good sight. Satisfying, especially now. She relaxes into the pilot webbing and closes her eyes. She spends the time turning over the last day in her head, grasping the size and shape of things, the breadth and weight of it all. The then proximity alert goes off, and she takes the controls again.

There’s a moment of trouble on docking, when the clamps don’t line up and the bay doesn’t open, but Shepard’s old hacking programs have another hour of limelight and then she’s in. The bay is dark and empty of both other shuttles and people. The shuttle says it’s aired up, though, and that’s all Shepard needs. She checks all the systems again, stuffs all the ration bars from the shuttle into her bag, eats one after a bit of thought, and then steps out of the shuttle with her skin prickling.

She can feel the hairs on the nape of her neck stand up. It’s eerie as all hell being in an empty docking bay. It even smells abandoned. She looks back at the shuttle, feeling like she should lock it somehow, and then sets off, following the ship sounds. The sounds are as familiar to her as her own heartbeat, and she’s known them as long: engine core humming, air system whistling, even the tiny whir underfoot when the walkway lights up ahead of her. The ship is as deserted as the docking bay, and it’s small. She searches the entire ship, quiet as she can, slow so she doesn’t clunk, and finds no one. 

She comes in time to the bridge, following a faint light around corners and up a ladder. There is a sturdy, bow-legged figure looking through the plastiglass window. Shepard pauses. A ship this size would need a bare minimum of ten staff, so where the hell is everyone else? The only other places on the ship are the bunks. Sleeping? Planetside, with the missing shuttles? Explosively decompressed in the missing shuttles? 

“Scuse me,” Shepard says, clear and loud and ringing, with a vicious stab of amusement when the figure lurches with shock, “You people got a public bathroom in here?”

The figure turns, hands lifting with a halo of blue, but Shepard’s already darting forward, pulling a sharpened kitchen knife from her waistband. It’s the clone, as Shepard expected. The clone cuts her biotics and stares at Shepard, barely clear of open mouthed shock.

“How,” the clone says, “the hell did you get on this ship without my knowing?”

“I’m a professional,” Shepard says. “You really gotta quit playing grab ass with me. I’m sick of seeing my face when I’m not looking in a mirror.”

It’s not Shepard’s face anymore, not really. The clone has none of the scarring, none of the laugh lines or crow’s feet. The clone looks like a smooth teenager in comparison. Shepard wonders if she ever looked that young, and decides maybe when she was that young. 

“I had to do something,” the clone says.

“It’s all under control,” Shepard says, readying herself to store up any slipped explanations.

“Don't you ever get tired of lying?” the clone ask, more curious than anything. 

“Not at all,” Shepard says, mildly confused by the concept. It comes as easy to her as breathing, the usage on instinct. 

“We're a two man con job,” the clone says. “Sleight of hand. Same face, same everything, but the littlest swap in the guts and here we are.”

“No,” Shepard says. “Not sleight of hand. House of mirrors.”

The clone quirks her mouth. A minor tragedy: this is the only person with Shepard’s almost exact sense of humor. She claps Shepard on the shoulder.

“Warped reflection,” the clone muses. “Well, maybe.”

Shepard calculates now, a dozen or more factors balancing and tottering in the depths of her mind, and on an instant’s premonition reaches and clasps the clone by the hand. With her other hand she drops the kitchen knife back into her waistband. She doesn’t want to take that kind of preemptive action. 

“You’re not me,” Shepard says. This is a ridiculous statement, and they both know it, but they make eye contact and the clone does not smile. She is quite as grave as Shepard. Shepard says, “I got nothing for you. None of the cliches.”

“And yet…” the clone says. The silence lingers.

“There is a better world coming,” Shepard says, with conviction she does not feel, but the clone’s face softens. Agreement? Pity? Longing? Shepard doesn’t know, but it’s too late to stop now, and she keeps talking without probing why she does so. “Even before this is all over. There’s a better world than there used to be.”

“Naturally,” the clone says. 

“The work,” Shepard says, tightening her grip. The clone does not flinch. Shepard digs down into her head, pulling out the shredded memories of the clone, the Citadel. What does it take? What does she need? “The only thing keeping me going is the work that I have to do. I have to make things better.”

The clone, Shepard thinks, understands what Shepard isn’t saying. Shepard has to make things better, put in this work, because doing anything else is intolerable. 

“I have no work,” the clone says, very matter-of-fact. “Not like yours. This is my work, Shepard.”

“No,” Shepard says. “That’s not your work. It’s what you think has to be done.”

The clone smiles. “Humans first, Shepard, remember?”

Shepard smiles. “We could argue,” Shepard says, “But I’m reasonably sure you don’t really believe that anymore.”

The clone tips her head. “To an extent. I have...gained some experience since the last time we met.”

Shepard snorts. “You fucked an alien.”

The clone smiles like a sphynx. 

“This isn’t work,” Shepard says. “It’s hollow, isn’t it? Doesn’t wear you out enough to sleep. Doesn’t do anything but fill the hours.” 

“Busy hours for joyful hearts,” the clone says. She’s still smiling that little Mona Lisa smirk, but Shepard can sense something shifting, a new paradigm taking hold. There’s no sign beyond the gut feeling, but Shepard grips the gut feeling tight. 

“No friends,” Shepard says, her voice intense and quiet, her eyes bright. “You’ve gone past revenge, you’ve gone past hate, you’ve done anything remotely constructive. What’s left? What’s left after revenge?”

“You threw me off a ship,” the clone says, still smiling her little smile. “I fell into the Wards. I almost suffocated on the way down. I have some fancy implants-better than yours-and I didn’t die. I never expected to be afraid of death. I should never have woken up. I was collateral damage, Shepard.”

“No,” Shepard says. “You were a consequence. And an accident. Like most people are at some point.”

“I will tell you what is left after revenge, Shepard,” the clone says. “Fear. I am afraid of you. I am afraid of what you can do.”

“You’re afraid it’s in you, too,” Shepard says, adjusting her aim, flying blind. Something has to work. Something has to get through. She is not walking away again. Then she sees the clone’s face, and the revelation is like dawn rising. 

“No,” Shepard says. “You’re afraid it isn’t in you. Your mercenaries. Maya Brooks. Cerberus. Nothing but what fear and control can buy. You’re afraid you aren’t me. You’re afraid you can’t be me.”

The clone’s smile slips away. “I don’t want to be you. I am still learning to be myself. I don’t want your control over people, the way they listen to you like a prophet.”

“You don’t want my control over you, you mean,” Shepard says. The clone stiffens. 

“No,” the clone says. “I don’t. I don’t want your supernatural charisma interfering. I am not you, I don’t want to be you.”

“You aren’t,” Shepard says flatly, quickly, like lancing a boil. “You never will be. It takes some real special goddamn circumstances to make me. Potential doesn’t make who you are.”

The clone waves a hand as if to wave off this obvious bit of wisdom. “That isn’t the point.”

“No support. No back up. No one to talk to, no one to know you, no one to surprise you with dinner or a cup of coffee. No one you trust enough to rub your back at the end of the day. No one you can call on the comm or the ansible, nothing to tell them about anyway. No delights. No satisfaction. No purpose. No fulfillment. It’s so empty, you can’t stand it, the anger isn’t there anymore, you know you can do it but you’re not sure you want to anymore,” Shepard reels off, maintaining eye contact, her face hard and intent.   
“They all walk away from you. They turn their backs on you. Aren’t you the same, the exact same, as the Savior of the goddamn Citadel? The hero worshipped across the galaxy? What is the difference? Why can’t you keep them at your side, when Shepard does it with nothing but words? You can’t even yoke them to you with money, with threats, and Shepard commands their lives with a twitch of her fingers. What does it take? Why can’t you do it? Why did Brooks even bother waking you up? You’re just an organ bank. You have no meaning, you have no place. You were never even supposed to have a mind, nevermind wake up and use it. There’s nothing in place for you, and no one will help you.”

The silence stretches. The clone stares at Shepard, ashen-faced, her eyes huge and dark in her face. 

“There’s still so much you can do,” Shepard says, her voice shading towards desperation. “I want to help you. I want you to help me. Purpose. Fulfillment. Loyalty. Family. It’s all here for you. Just take my hand. Come with me. Trust me. Please.”

“Okay,” the clone says. “Okay.”

The clone takes her hand. The clone allows herself to be bundled onto the shuttle and brought back to the ship, silent, in a numb shock. When they arrive back at the ship, she allows herself to be bundled off the shuttle and escorted to the rec room, and allows her hand to be wrapped around a mug of cool lemon water. She then allows herself to be locked in another of the cabins with a bowl of granola and nuts, and Shepard locks the door on a woman sitting on a bed staring vacantly into the distance. 

She nods to the Langenauers, making her excuses-(“Please, give me an hour or two, I have to arrange my head before I can explain anything to anyone, I’m really not sure what happened myself,”) and finds Garrus some way down the hall in their cabin. She sits on the bunk opposite him after closing the door.

He sighs deeply, relaxing all the way from fringe to feet. 

“What was that about a miracle?” Shepard asks. “Because truly, I have a silver tongue.”

“Is that an idiom?”

“Yes,” Shepard says. “It means I can talk my way out of anything.”

Garrus snorts. “Oh, spirits. Yes, you can. What silver tongue did you pull on the poor clone?”

“I told her the truth,” Shepard says, and sums up her conversation. 

“She thought you knew what she was doing,” Garrus says. “I guarantee it. Which means we’ll have a hell of a time finding out.”

“Maybe,” Shepard allows. “But she took my hand, Garrus. She came back with me. Spookiest fucking thing. Empty ship. Standing there all alone. Haunted. I think she’ll tell us. I think she wants me to fix it.”

“We’re still in for a hell of a time stopping anything,” Garrus says. “I think you used up your ‘Got Lucky By Talking Fast’ chance for the decade. Still, that was one hell of a toss of the dice.”

“A gamble,” Shepard says. “But I’ve taken bigger ones. She’s me, Garrus. I know her better than probably anyone who isn’t Maya Brooks. She must have been working with aliens day in and day out. Her ship is all alien tech. It was a lucky stroke.”

“Right,” Garrus says.

“Garrus,” Shepard says. “She’s only a kid. She crumpled so fast. If I could do it that fast, someone else could have gotten to her, too. It’s pragmatism.”

“And sentimentality,” Garrus says.

Shepard shrugs one shoulder, groping for the words. At last, she says, “She’s kind of my kid. Or my twin. I don’t...Garrus, I don’t have anyone left.”

Garrus moves to the bunk and grips her bicep, his mandibles pressed tight to his jaw. After a moment, tentatively, Shepard reaches up and touches his hand. 

“Alright,” he says, his voice rough, extravagantly flanging. “I’ll back you on it. I swear, though, Shepard, I’ll break her neck myself.”

“I know,” she says, resting her head on his shoulder before the flickering terror in her gut stops her. When he moves his arm around her, the terror quickens and fades. She hopes it isn’t terminal, maybe having it bad for your best friend. “I know, Garrus. I trust your judgement.”

“I trust your judgement most of the time,” Garrus says. Shepard laughs. 

“That’s fair,” Shepard says. “I got a really good feeling about this one, though. Get some answers, finally. Find out what’s up with that goddamn Reaper ship.”

She feels Garrus shudder. She pats his hand. She gets a cold chill at the word, herself. 

“I don’t like it,” Garrus says. “It’s too easy. All of it.”

“I know,” Shepard says. “I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

Eventually he says, “Shepard. I hope you’re right about the clone.”

“Me too,” she says. “I just don’t know what the hell we’re supposed to call her.”


	8. Chapter 8

“Well, it wasn’t my first felony,” Shepard is saying modestly when Garrus makes his way to the rec room, having stopped to check the locks on the various cabins-they’re getting quite a prison going-and she’s already sprawled languidly over the most comfortable chair in the room. Garrus sits between her and the Langenauers, pouring a cup of water from the pitcher on the table. Ayelet and Graene aren’t eating, but Shepard is tearing through a bowl of some horrid-looking mash. 

“I can only imagine,” Garrus begins, and then sees the look on her face. He laughs and says, “Wait, are you telling them about when you assaulted Wrex with an anti materiel rifle?”

“I didn’t assault him,” Shepard insists, in the reedy tone of someone that’s getting tired of repeating something. “He told me he’d get out of the way. He was fine! I don’t know why they made me go to court.”

“He only has three lungs now,” Garrus points out. 

“The primary consequence of any action is being the person that did it,” Shepard says, with a little sigh that reeks of false regret. Eve if Garrus hadn’t seen her riotous laughter over every retelling every time she’s drunk, he wouldn’t believe it. “Besides, I apologized. Very nicely, I thought.”

“The flowers were an elegant touch,” Garrus concedes. 

“He didn’t hold it against me,” Shepard says. “Still. Not the first one.”

“What was your first felony?” Ayelet asks.

“It’s classified,” Shepard says, then counts on her fingers, looking thoughtful. “So are….the other five.”

“As long as you were in the navy at the time,” Ayelet says, with a faintly regretful tone. 

“I was,” Shepard says. “Can’t help you. Call my boss, I’m retired.”

Garrus chuckles. He knows the incidents in question, and one was dropped for falsified evidence, three were dropped after the war, and only one was brought to court, and that Shepard won’t talk about beyond ‘financial dealings with the American government’. 

“We’ve all had our wild youths,” Graene says smoothly. “Gun-running, terrorist cells, counterfeiting currency.”

“The usual?” Garrus says. He tucks ‘counterfeiting currency’ away for later, surely considered a financial dealing. His mandibles lift, and he gestures wistfulness. “My father will never believe me that my rebellious streak was nothing.”

“I learned English,” Ayelet offers, with a shrug. 

“I fucked an alien,” Shepard says, then considers this, mouth quirked.

“We all have,” Garrus says gently. 

Shepard counts on her fingers, then corrects, “Five aliens.”

“Wait a minute,” Garrus says, over Graene and Ayelet’s challenges to this. “Five?”

“Not during my rebellious stage,” Shepard says. “I just didn’t have anything else to use.”

Garrus clamps his mandibles tight to his face. “Five? When? Spirits.”

Shepard eyes the Langenauers, clearly gauging how much is appropriate to tell, before she says, “The rumors weren’t as exaggerated as everyone thought.”

Garrus mulls this over, a little impressed and a little uncomfortable. The rumors had Shepard sleeping with everyone from Saren Arterius to Joker, and the rumors among the Normandy crew were only a bit narrower in scope. He knows of two, at least, though of course Shepard wouldn’t think of Kaidan as an alien.

“Javik?” he tries at last. Shepard turns that dark color that means she’s embarrassed, and he barks a laugh. “I knew it! The two of you were so stiff after that party on the Citadel!”

“I fell through a floor,” Shepard says, narrowing her eyes. 

“My, Shepard,” Ayelet says. “Your adventurous reputation is apparently well earned.” 

If Garrus isn’t mistaken, Graene is leering at Shepard. If he’s right about human facial expressions, Ayelet is leering too. 

“Interesting,” Garrus says, meaning both the looks and the newfound side of Shepard. “Can’t blame you. I know I’ve always been attracted to incredibly unpleasant men that solve all their problems with violence.”

Shepard snorts, but mercifully doesn’t call him out. She takes a contemplative sip of coffee. “It was,” she says, “in the interests of human-Prothean diplomacy.”

“And Kaidan,” Garrus says, his mandibles drooping like he’s laughing, “was in the interests of Canadian diplomacy?”

“I’m surprised you know about Canada,” Shepard says, and while Garrus is trying to figure out if this is offensive she continues, “No, Kaidan was meeting someone at the wrong time in your life.”

Ouch, Garrus thinks. “Come on, Shepard. That still leaves three.”

Damn it, he thinks instantly, when Graene’s expression turns sly. Of course she caught that Shepard’s only given one name.

“Sha’ira,” Shepard says.

“Doesn’t count,” Garrus says, “I knew about that one.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Shepard says. “Fine. I wasn’t counting Sha’ira.”

“Mordin,” Garrus guesses. At the look on her face he says, “What? You doted on him.”

“Not Mordin,” Shepard says. “But it was a fair guess. And not Wrex, either.”

“Do you exclusively sleep with your crew members?” Ayelet asks.

“Not only,” Shepard says. “Just recently.”

“Then Liara and Tali,” Garrus says, then says, “No, not Tali. But definitely Liara.”

“Got it,” Shepard says, glumly. “Not Tali. Kal’Reegar.”

“Nice kid,” Garrus reflects. “Worse ways to go, though.”

“Real nice kid,” Shepard says, and they tap their cups together and drink. “Anyway, it’s Adrien Victus. Don’t even start with me! It was a very stressful time in my life.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Garrus says. “Still, you’re climbing down the ladder of the Hierarchy.”

Shepard shrugs. Ayelet’s eyes narrow, looking between Shepard and Garrus, and she gives Graene a look. Graene rolls her eyes. 

“I don’t mind,” Shepard says, with a casual air, and takes a long drink of her coffee. It’s a nice sentiment, and it puts a warm feeling in his gut, but he can see the calculation in her eyes as she surveys the Langenauers. When they don’t react-beyond Graene’s comfortably loose mandible position-she lowers the mug. 

“Well,” she says, “I meant to be closing a trap. Seems like I won’t have to.”

“What?” Graene says. 

“The person I brought on board this ship is a clone,” Shepard says evenly, “I had to consider the possibility you two were in her employ.”

“Forgive me if I don’t see the connection,” Ayelet says. 

“The clone is overwhelmingly pro-human,” Shepard says, clipped and efficient, “To the extent that she has worked with pro-human terrorist groups in the past.”

After a moment, Shepard amends this to, “Voluntarily worked with.”

“I am married to an alien,” Ayelet says, just the slightest stiffness in the words to tell Garrus she’s offended. 

“You’d be surprised what people can hide,” Shepard says, “And you’d be surprised what people will agree with, even if it’s bad for them.”

“Is this clone responsible for what’s going on?” Graene asks. 

“I’m not sure,” Shepard says. “Certainly involved, but to what degree? Either way. She can’t be trusted. I don’t know how long it will be effective to keep her penned in, so I want to make that clear.”

“Effective,” Ayelet repeats.

“The clone has some unusual skills,” Garrus says. “I think she’s the orchestrator here, but I’ll reserve judgement.”

Shepard sighs deeply through her nose and says, “You may notice this clone and I look a bit alike. She was a...medical experiment.”

This settles well, better than Garrus would have expected. He looks at the Langenauers, waiting for Graene to ask, but she chuckles. 

“Why a medical experiment?” Garrus asks, finally, still baffled.

Shepard laughs. “I forgot. We have a cultural trope. Mad scientists doing all sorts of dodgy experiments. Cloning. Diseases. Weird monsters.”

“Huh,” Garrus says, working this one over in his mind. No wonder Cerberus is such a bogeyman. 

“Anyway,” Shepard says. “That’s the base of it. I’m going to go talk to her, see what else I can dig up.”

“Want some help?” Garrus asks, cracking his knuckles.

“No,” she says. “But stick close. You never know.”

Shepard pauses outside the cabin door with two cups of coffee gripped by the handles in one hand and a fistful of granola bars in the other. She feels a bit like she imagines a teenager picking up their prom date does, lingering outside the door and swallowing nerves and spit. She doesn’t want to go in, but the coffees are getting uncomfortable. She knows she’s being absurd, and she kicks open the door, slips in, and kicks it shut before she can stop herself. The clone is awake, still looking vacantly at the wall, and Shepard gives her one of the cups and most of the granola bars before sitting next to her.

“So,” Shepard says, peeling open one of the bars and cramming it into her mouth. “Lord have mercy, I feel like I haven’t eaten in days.”

The clone jerks at the sound of Shepard’s voice, whipping her head to the side. 

“I don’t know what to call you,” Shepard says. “Clearly, I’m ‘me’ which would mean ‘you’ is a reasonable option, but it seems...impractical.”

“I have a name,” the clone says, her voice tight and faint. Shepard tips her head. It’s not shock and it isn’t any kind of dissociation she recognizes. Maybe she just needs to eat something. Shepard prods her with one of the granola bar until the clone deigns to take it and eat it.

“No, you don’t,” Shepard says through another mouthful of food. “It’s my name, and you need your own.”

“It wouldn’t work with us in the same place, anyway,” the clone says, her voice distant. She sounds like Shepard, but Shepard looking down on the shape and size of her pain from a great way away. She looks at Shepard the same way Shepard looks at herself in the mirror: dull confusion, a bit of contempt, like the reflection is someone she doesn’t know and doesn’t particularly like. 

Shepard squashes up the giddy feeling in her gut and adds it to the ever-increasing shelf of things to ignore in her mind. It’s putting the cart about two continents in front of the horse, and worse, it’s unprompted. The clone is not family. The clone is not happy to see her. Shepard just misses her brother. She eats another granola bar, morosely, before responding. 

“I don’t want to rush you into picking something,” Shepard says, “Maybe a nickname? How’s that do you?”

“Like what,” the clone asks flatly. 

“Sheep,” Shepard offers. The clone stares at her. “You know? Shepherds and their sheep? Nevermind.”

“I think I won’t be letting you choose,” the clone says. “You will call me...Nike. That’s my name.”

“You lost,” Shepard says. The clone-Nike?-smiles, catlike, though her face is still blanched and brittle.

“A metaphor,” Nike says. “Where is your pet Ceberus operative? All your aliens?”

“Doing errands,” Shepard says. 

“The Ceberus one would be useful,” Nike sighs. Shepard’s ears prick up. She supposes it wouldn’t hurt for Nike to know that Shepard doesn’t know what she was up to, but she’s never regretted a little healthy paranoia. 

“Probably,” Shepard says. “For more reasons than you’d think.”

Amen, Shepard says to herself fervently. Nike opens a granola bar and eats it slowly. She’s perking up a little, flushing with a healthier color, but Shepard thinks that Nike might be more fragile than she was originally banking on. She’s healthy, surely, or was, if Ceberus was planning to use her as an organ donor. 

Although falling to the Citadel probably takes a toll. 

Shepard rests one hand on her left prosthetic, a little rueful. Falling from the Citadel certainly did. 

She makes a note to find a chance to ask Nike about her implants. Shepard is almost a third synthetic. A scan would be able to tell the difference, if Nike isn’t that much cyborg. It’s also plain curiosity; Nike is biotic, and Shepard wants to know what Ceberus had her working with. 

“The Reaper ship will be moving closer over the next twelve hours,” Nike says, serene, eyes looking blankly past Shepard’s shoulder, then jerking her gaze to meet Shepard’s eyes.

“Did you call it?” Shepard asks.

“No,” she says. “It has nothing to do with me. It broke the terms of our deal. It won’t even have noticed I’m gone. No, by now, it’ll have noticed the ship is empty, and it’ll come to find out why.”

“Jesus,” Shepard says, despite herself. “Okay. Why would the Reaper care your ship is empty?”

Nike sharpens, drawing in on herself. “You don’t know then. Well, well. Perhaps you’re more useful to me than I thought.”

“Funny,” Shepard says. “There’s no one on this ship that wouldn’t be able to tell us apart.”

“Mhm,” Nike says, eyeing Shepard. “No, that’s true. Still, it goes to show you shouldn’t make decisions before you know what’s going on. I appreciate you bringing me onto the ship, and I appreciate your effort, but I do think you’re going to regret it.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Shepard says. “You deserve the same chances I give everyone else.”

“Oh, Shepard,” Nike says, pitying, knowing, “You’re a goddamn fool.”

Shepard works her mouth around this idea for a minute. “You struck a deal.”

“Of course,” Nike says. 

“It’s inert?”

“It was when I found it,” Nike says. “I bargained with the remnants of whoever it was. I thought it might be useful.”

“Useful,” Shepard repeats. She experiences a moment of clarity on what dealing with her must be like. 

“Oh, yes,” Nike says, looking quite satisfied with herself. “I can’t talk a cat off a fish truck, but I can drive a hard bargain.”

With something already empty and dying, Shepard thinks, with something you don’t have to feign any connection or loyalty to. She eats another granola bar. 

“I wonder which of us is objectively more depressing,” she says. 

“You,” Nike says without stopping to think. Shepard considers this and shrugs.

“Yeah,” she says. “Maybe. But at least I’m old enough to drink.”

“I am not hurtling towards retirement age.”

Shepard snorts. “Neither am I.”

Nike gives her a delicate, eloquent once-over with her eyebrows lifted, and declines to answer this.

“Tell me about this bargain,” Shepard says. 

Shepard’s mind shifts, alert and ready, a dozen different parts picking over the empty ship, the Reaper, the clone crumpling after a short, if brutal, conversation. 

“Shepard,” the clone says,“Come on. You know my ship should have had dozens more people. What does a Reaper ship use human bodies for?”

The ship’s alarm klaxons begin to howl. Lines glow around the base of the door. Shepard lurches to her feet with the instinctive speed of a lifelong spacer, dragging the clone out into the hallway just before the bulkhead doors slam down in each doorway. Garrus is out, already halfway into a breach suit, and Shepard pulls on the helmet he tosses her one-handed. Her grip on Nike is just short of bone-breaking, but the clone pulls on her own helmet without changing her expression, and follows without resistance when Shepard takes off for the bridge. The ship shudders, alarms shrieking, and the lights and gravity cut out. Shepard is used to moving in zero gravity, but the abrupt switch in the darkness has them all staggering and crashing together. Two minutes later the emergency lights come on, and Nike is long gone. 

“Saw that one coming,” Garrus says over the helmet comm, and Shepard kicks her way to the bridge a touch more violently than necessary. The ship still shows the shuttle docked, but Shepard isn’t willing to bank on that. 

“We’ve been fired on,” she says, flipping through the screens to find the pathetic shields suite and key them up. “God, I hate commercial ships. This shield’ll crack like an egg if you look at it wrong.”

“No life support,” Garrus says. “Looks like everyone got behind the section bulkheads in time, though. All aired up.”

Shepard sends up a fervent thank you to anyone that might be listening and keeps digging for any weapons the ship might have. 

“Can you get through to the Langenauers?” she asks. “Somehow you ended up with the master unit.”

“Strange,” Garrus says, and she can hear the smile in his voice. After a minute he says, “Hang on, it’s patching.”

“Commander?” Ayelet says into Shepard’s helmet, tinny and staticky. “Is there a hull breach?”

“I don’t think so,” Shepard says. “This ship has the shittiest systems layout I’ve ever seen. I hope you didn’t pay cash for this.”

“Take it up with the Alliance,” Ayelet says. 

Shepard swaps screens again, pulling up the security footage, and she can see all the people on the ship, bright flickering vital signs overlaid on their figures. No injuries. No breach. 

“Something overloaded,” Shepard says. “I think that Reaper fired.”

“Something did,” Garrus says dryly. “Warning shot.”

“No,” Shepard says. “It was a disabling shot. The clone’s been sending her crew over to the Reaper. I think it’s following her.”

There is silence over the comm. 

“‘Scuse me,” Shepard says, makes her way to the garbage chute, lifts her helmet, and vomits into one of the sickness bags. She spits, catching it all, replaces her helmet, and sticks the bag down the chute. “Come on, now. We all know what Reapers do with human bodies, don’t we?” 

“Yes,” Ayelet says. 

“Didn’t I tell you I saw a husk on the planet?” she says. 

“Well, Shepard,” Garrus says. “What else’ve you got now?”

Shepard spins to give him a nasty look, and he shrugs, easily catching himself before he drifts off into the ‘air’ of the bridge. 

Shepard feels a fierce, brief exultation and stokes it to cover her horror and guilt and fear. Not hallucinating. Not losing her mind. 

Why didn’t they just leave her under the Citadel? Better to have rotted there than lose her legs and her entire life. Better to have starved in the rubble than see another Reaper. Better to have suffocated at Alchera and never come back. She wonders who will bother bringing her back the next time they need something done, or if they'll finally let her stay dead. 

“We ram it,” she says.


	9. Chapter 9

There’s no flooring it in a spaceship, but Shepard is familiar enough with the controls of one to set them on a direct collision course with the Reaper ship. After the briefest split second of consideration, she smashes the command console with the heel of one foot, and then pulls herself back down the wall and flips upright with the orientation of the ship. 

“Six minutes to impact,” Garrus says over the comm, his voice flat and atonal, and Shepard cuts the comm before she hears any response. She stands, in the dark and the silence, and watches the Reaper ship approach, a color on the radar, a shape against the planet below. A flicker of color coruscates on the edge of her vision-Garrus’ seizure monitor going wild-and she doesn’t unclench her fists until the monitor shuts off. 

Warnings and alarms go off on her helmet readout, and Shepard shunts them all into the trash. She doesn’t know what any of them mean. She doesn’t care what any of them mean. Her head is nothing but data: the odds of a Reaper ship versus an unarmored, unarmed glorified courier ship(.03% in their favor, varying), how long any of them will live with the life support off (ninety one minutes and counting, jumping by hours with the removal of crew members), odds of the Reaper ship’s destruction (83% at current velocity, varying up to 90% and down to 67%, all acceptable by any standard). 

She turns when Garrus’ monitor flares again, and pulls herself closer, dodging his arm coming down to drag him nearer. The monitor keeps going as the Reaper ship comes closer, and Shepard pictures it looming bigger and bigger overhead, percussive booming rattling her teeth, and tightens her grip on Garrus’ wrist. 

Ten seconds before impact, she spares the smallest flash of grief for the Langenauers and the ship’s crew, and readies herself.  
Impact.

Pain, and light. Garrus wrenches against her grip, and they’re both flung against the bulkhead. In the clouds of gas freezing into vapor and the smashing metal, she can see his monitor strobing. She hits again and folds, neck and then waist-elbows-knees-wrists, spills out, hits and folds again, and her helmet cracks. Noise floods the helmet. There’s air, but she chokes. 

The air hisses free. Shepard gasps, reaching out before she’s crushed against a wall. She prays, hopelessly, ceaselessly, but doesn’t black out, doesn’t die. Slowly, the crushing stops, and the noise stops, and the darkness comes back, and they’re rotating, and her air is still going. Shepard slams her helmet into the wall, and again, and again, until her faceplate shatters.

“Finish it already, you bastard,” she whispers (to herself? the Reaper? to God? she doesn’t know anymore) and clamps her mouth shut on the rest of her air.

She drifts, spiraling, head aching, and nothing goes dark; eventually, the lights come on, and she smashes to the ground in a bridge bent and burnt beyond all recognition. That seventeen percent, come to bite her in the ass. She inhales, sharply, on hitting the floor, and then more when she realizes the bridge is aired up. Something is making the weird whistling noise of a life support system, and Garrus is out cold on the tile. 

Shepard.

“Fuck,” Shepard rasps. “Fuck you.”

The Reaper doesn’t respond. Maybe she hurt its feelings. Shepard drags herself over to Garrus, digging for a pulse, and claps him on the shoulder. “Well,” she says.

She considers, for more than a few seconds, leaning her weight onto his throat. It wouldn’t take much, and it would be a mercy, but she pushes herself to sitting and settles in to wait. Her prosthetics aren’t responding, anyway, and that gives her a big swell of dread. She clicks her tongue at herself. Getting sloppy in her old age. 

Something moans, and Shepard turns, skin prickling. A husk is picking its way through the wreckage. She sits, staring, like the biggest idiot in navy history, biotics sputtering like a dying lighter, and then suddenly everything snaps and catches and she tears it apart with the strongest warp she’s ever made in her life. Something moans on another side, and Shepard wheels, already lining up the singularity, and then her clone steps through the wall and knocks her back with a solid hit to the side of the head. 

"Next time you try to kill all of us for no reason, make sure you go first," the clone says. "Age before beauty, you absolute bastard." 

"It almost sounds like you're teasing me," Shepard says. It makes no sense, but she's grudgingly fond of the clone. The woman might have stolen her face and her identity, but it was out of misguided ideals, not malice, and Shepard has always liked ballsy determination. 

"Oh, I am," the clone says easily. "I'm keeping myself busy, you understand."

"Sure, yeah. Got a few ways I can keep you busy, don't you worry."

"Thanks ever so," the clone drawls. 

Shepard feels a brief moment of grief for the woman the clone could have been, if she'd taken Shepard’s hand that day instead of jumping. Shepard takes a moment to look her over again, though she at least makes an attempt to hide her curiosity. This is what she could have looked like-this is what she did look like, before the coma and the surgeries and the long fall from the Citadel. She plans to get a picture the second no one is paying attention. Shepard's mother would be so disappointed, she thinks. Looks like she never really did grow out of that vanity.

Shepard reels, closing her eyes, and pushes herself back up, locking her arms straight behind her for balance. Not the time, not the place. 

Shepard says, "What on earth were you thinking?"

"How were you ever really sure the Reapers were gone?" the clone asks, knocking Shepard for six. Her eyes are bright and sly under the bruising. "Yeah, no one knows what happened up there, but I've got a few ideas, Shepard, and none of them paint you in a very good light."

"You don't need to know how I know," Shepard says, like the clone is a toddler asking for a snack before dinner. "They didn't come back, did they?"

"As far as you know, they didn't," the clone says, all mockery, all amusement wiped from her face. She's chalk white. "Shepard. You never made sure the Reapers were gone, you sad, stupid idiot. "

"What you're implying is impossible," Shepard says steadily, but her stomach starts to protest. She won't consider it. It's impossible. The AI on the Citadel had been unexpected and convenient and extremely suspect tech, but the Reapers died. She saw parts of Harbinger in a museum, shielded to prevent indoctrination. She must be lying. Shepard steadfastly cannot consider any other possibility. 

This Reaper, here, that she’s sitting in the belly of, waiting to be torn apart by husks, is an outlier. A sad, awful freak event, that she’s trying her best to give her life to prevent, if anything in this inhospitable universe would cut her some slack. 

“Who would you be without your limits?” the clone asks. “You’d be me, Shepard. It’s better for them this way. They don’t see it coming.”

“Oh, Lord,” Shepard says faintly. “I knew you were nuts.”

“The Crucible released insane amounts of energy,” the clone says after a moment. “You obviously hit a kill switch. The Reapers dropped. But not, I think, permanently.”

“Alright.”

“Some kind of stop switch, and then you nearly destroyed the relays,” the clone continues, looking frustrated. “I don’t have enough information to figure out how you did it.”

“You’re not going to get it.”

“Then you’re not going to know where I found them,” the clone says peevishly. “We’re one for one here.”

“Do you have any definitive proof the Reapers are-” Shepard pauses. She can’t get the words out of her mouth. “That they weren’t gone in the first place?”

“I guess technically they were,” the clone says, all offhand and casual. “You knocked them six sheets to the wind, for sure. Killed a few, probably. But really, does it seem likely that the war would have ended that simply?”

“So you don’t.”

“Oh, no, I do.”

“So?”

“I’ve spoken to them, Nora,” the clone says, leaning forward again. “Oh, they’re so angry. It almost made me want to die. I went inside the Reaper, Nora, I was the Reaper and when I came back out nothing was the same.”

Shepard skitters a little backwards. It’s been some time since she encountered indoctrination firsthand, and some of the warning signs have faded from her memory, but being around the clone when she talks about Reapers is giving Shepard a feeling like she’s covered in spiders. 

“Do things feel like a dream?” she demands. 

“What isn’t a dream?”

“Answer me. Are you hearing any voices? Headaches?”

“Of course not,” the clone says, her gaze sharpening. “Why? Do you think I’m indoctrinated? I guess it’s not unlikely.”

Shepard tries to organize the data in her mind, to move the disparate pieces into orderly lines so she can pull out of the shock-induced feedback loop, but all she can think is I was wrong, over and over again.This Reaper being more than an outlier is so much worse than anything she’d been prepared for. 

“On the Citadel, there was an AI,” Shepard says wildly. She’s never once told the truth about what happened on the Citadel. “It told me I could end the war. Gave me a few choices. I didn’t even question it. It was like being in a dream. I just accepted that everything was real. I don’t know why it didn’t just send them back into dark space instead of putting everything on me and when it was over I was so relieved that I never even checked if it was final.”  
A year wasted in a coma. Normandy lost in space. No one who would have thought to check, no one who could have. No one who would have checked at all. She sees her mother, who has lost her daughter twice now. She sees Garrus on Menae, and she sees Anderson, lying against her and bleeding to death all over her undersuit. 

Start at the core and work outward, Tali told her once. Make sure critical systems are still functioning, and then work on the periphery. Shepard isn’t an engineer, but it seems to work when Tali troubleshoots. 

“It’s endless, isn’t it?” Shepard asks no one in particular. The clone gives her a friendly smile, absolutely bone-chilling. 

Very fuzzily and weakly, Garrus says, “I know humans are all insane, but I think she got a concentrated dose.”

“Cerberus tech,” Shepard reminds him, face smooth, though she’s so relieved she could cry. “Surprised she never got loose and started killing all their guys.”

“Very expensive,” Garrus says.

Ignoring the clone, Shepard says, “This clone is also a batshit-fucking-crazy maniac with a perverse fixture on making me question myself, although at least she isn’t trying to kill me this time, so let’s take our victories where we can. She is firmly insistent that the Reapers were never defeated in the first place, despite all evidence to the contrary, namely that it’s been all this damn time and nothing’s happened.”

“Correct,” the clone says, with no amusement or irritation in her tone. 

“I’m not worried,” Shepard says. “Humans are apex predators everywhere we go. Give me a stone axe and let me loose in dark space, I’ll end the war before it starts.”

“The only thing more dangerous than a human is a group of humans, right?” Garrus says with a bark of laughter, more staticky and prickly than anything though Shepard isn’t hearing it through a comm.

Shepard’s bright, direct gaze has sent mercenaries fleeing, stared down Reapers, shook down krogans. Garrus is the bane of Omega, Archangel, a crack shot with his eyes closed and both his hands tied behind his back. The clone not only refuses to be intimidated, but shows no sign of even being aware that intimidation was the expected result. 

“Okay,” Shepard says, with a sick, hot feeling in her stomach. “I believe you. Is this Reaper dead?”

“Dying,” the clone says, looking dispassionately at the ruins of the bridge and the shell of the Reaper superstructure around it. “But sound.”

The worst part of it all is that outside of the situation, with concussion and fear dulling the edges of her reaction, she can understand what the clone is about. An official death toll was never settled on after the war, but it reaches well into the trillions across thousands of worlds and over half a dozen species. The prospect of facing that again is not an enticing one. There are vast stretches of Earth that are nothing more than burnt out rubble, abandoned and uninhabited, right up to the edges of the megatropolises. 

Burn them all now to save them from the slaughter later. It makes a certain amount of sense. 

It’s not unlike ramming a ship loaded with civilians into a Reaper. 

Shepard leans over and retches and then thinks: threat to the species. Where on that scale do any of them fall? It isn’t about the numbers any more than it is about individuals. 

Garrus makes a noise that trails off into senseless muttering. There are things out there, husks and worse besides, and if they aren’t in her way yet, they’re going to be in a matter of time. The anticipation is like bile in Shepard’s mouth. A tiny hopeful part of her is shriveled up and dead, and that’s never coming back.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> writers block is 4x as brutal when you have a toddler that still doesn't sleep through the night. some of this is probably choppy, but i'm too tired to figure out what i might have skipped, so if you notice anything lemme know

+ _ The Ship _

“Bathroom break is over,” the clone announces. “Time to get to business, you two.”

“Put me down,” Shepard says, restraining herself from a prolonged shiver when the clone sets her down. Bad enough to be pinned in place by Garrus, someone she trusts with her life, but light years worse to be pinned by her clone. When she moves, the clone follows fluidly, and Shepard snarls in irritation.

“Let me talk to the damn thing,” Shepard says. 

Behind her is a noise like an axe falling, and when she looks Garrus has the clone on the ground. Shepard drags herself forward a few feet to the wall, where the metal slides fluidly into lines of organic material. She considers positioning for a moment, then folds her fingers into a rigid triangle and drives the blade of her hand into the organic material. The ship shivers around them, dim lights flickering, and the Reaper shrieks in the distance. 

“Listen up, you bastard,” Shepard hollers. She senses a drawing-in of the air around them, the Reaper gathering itself to put off dying and listen.

**Shepard.**

“Listen up,” Shepard repeats, pausing to catch her breath in a couple of ragged gasps. Something got rattled real bad in the impact. She thinks, briefly, of everyone else-have to find the Langenauers, the poor bastards in their brigs, the scientists-and whether they’re alive, before bending herself to the task at hand. “You think you’re dying, don’t you?”

**We do not die any more than energy disappears.**

“Huh,” Shepard says. “That’s really nice. That’s good for you. But this, your body, the thing your conscience is housed in, I smashed it all to shit and it’s going bad real fast.”

The Reaper is silent for some time. 

**You are here to negotiate** .

“No,” Shepard says. “No, the time for negotiating was before you tried to wipe us out. You’re going to help me, or I’m going to rip your guts out from the inside to finish the job.”

**There is nothing to finish** .

The Reaper sounds almost winded, and the lights are dimmer. Shepard shudders once, all down her body. The belly of the beast. She rams her hand back into the Reaper’s side, and the ship screams all around them in stereo. Shepard’s skin crawls. If only ramming it had killed the damn thing.

“You help me, and I’ll make sure this thing doesn’t fall apart around you,” Shepard says. “Tell me where the rest of you are. Give me numbers. Give me data, and I’ll take my hand out.”

The ship is still hissing in pain in long, curling ribbons of static, but the Reaper says  **There are no armies. I may be the last, but that is nothing. I have found another way.**

Shepard spares a vicious glance for the clone, because someone is lying, and she doesn’t like either answer. 

“I don’t care what deal you two struck or what she thinks was going to happen here,” Shepard says. 

  
After some time, when the ship’s moans have long died off, and Shepard is sick with her self-pity and derision, the Reaper stirs again.

**There are no others that I knew of before I came to this planet** it says.  **That is your concern.**

“Yes,” Shepard says. “Yes, it is.”

**If you are amenable to a truce, I will not negotiate** .

“I told you,” Shepard says. “There’s no negotiating.”

The Reaper is silent. 

**You are expecting reinforcements** .

“No,” Shepard says. She drives her hand in further. The Reaper screams, and Shepard waits. It takes a long time, and the Reaper doesn’t stop screaming until the end. Shepard falls asleep or passes out several times with the Reaper ringing in her head, until the pounding of a migraine is too heavy to ignore. 

“Is it dead?” Garrus mumbles, and Shepard rouses enough to notice they’re in the dark.

“I don’t know,” she says, and lays her head back down on the deck.

+

The clone wakes into a nightmare, morning after morning. Some squalid pit of refugees, most human, but not all, and all of the aliens wretched with illness and bad temper, more disgusting than even the shit children leave in the street. No one comes to help. No one recognizes her. She doesn’t give a name. She talks to no one. She sits in her horrid hospital bed, in the hallway because she’d refused to stay in a room with a salarian, and the day rises and falls without a word leaving her mouth. 

All of them remind her of Shepard, the filth, the easy interactions, even the medications they offer to help with whatever they think her problem is. So eager to help, everyone on this awful planet, even for the aliens that would have abandoned them to the slaughter. 

+

The crew vanishes one by one. Every sleep cycle, every trip to the bathroom, every time the lights are off to conserve fuel, another is gone. No one knows why, and the captain locks herself away without a word to anyone. Increasingly aggravated bangs on the door bring no response. The crew limps along as best they can; meals are late, no drills are held, the bathroom gets dirtier, no one stands watch. The crew is not close-none of them knew each other before leaving, they don’t consider themselves friends-but the disappearances leave gaps like missing teeth. 

Still, it holds together well enough, rumors flying, tense atmosphere, until a tech sees the Reaper ship during a scan.

There are no riots or violence, but it’s a close thing. No one leaves their cabins. One records a message to his family.

Come a morning not long after arriving in the system, no one is left but the captain. The ship is never silent, but the air is still. When the last bangs and shouts have faded, the captain emerges. She goes to the bridge, where the dome overhead is wide and clear, and watches the sky wheel by. There is nothing but emptiness, farther than she can comprehend.

Still, she finds the vastness comforting. There are plenty of things she can’t comprehend, and never will, and others that she can understand but will never know the mechanics. As much as she despises having anything in common with her donor, she thinks this must have come from someone else. Who else does she know that is comfortable looking into space, even loves it? 

All the room, all the possibility, as far as anyone could want to travel in any direction they choose, and still no one willing to leave them alone, nowhere to go to be themselves alone. Still, she can look at black, and she can see a world where humanity can put their own problems first.

The consoles are still lit up, flickering neon colors all around. Warnings and alarms, probably, though she understands none of them and doesn’t particularly care. The ship has served its purpose. A different one than intended, to be sure, but the best plans are easy to change.

Shepard is an influential woman, too influential, and despite everything still trusts aliens, still trusts in the best of everyone to work together, to pull through the wreckage of the war. Ignorant. Naive.

Rioting on colony planets. No food shipments to anyone, anywhere. Colonists starving, though the war is over! The absurdity of it makes her sick. Spreading disease, old diseases that should have been wiped out. Violence from aliens. Economies falling apart faster than rebuilding can finish.

She had known, with a knowing deeper than anything sensible, that the Enemy was still alive, and that there was a way through all of this, a way to fix things. No way that Shepard could have won so easily, all the Reapers falling dead with no explanation.

And now. Here. At the end of all things. 

No dilution, only the purity of purpose. Crystalline. No doubt, for the first time since smashing into the Citadel Wards. 

It is terrible, of course, to hand over her crew to the Reaper, to the Enemy, who she knows can’t be trusted but must be worked with, any price worth paying. Any of them would agree that this is what must be done. For the good of humanity, there is no price she will not meet. 

And this crew, nothing but detritus, does not trust her, and does not like her. There is no conflict when she agrees to the Reaper’s price. They are given up for a greater cause than they had set out with. Besides, the Reaper will need bodies to work with, more than it has on this planet, more than her crew.

That, she will give freely, as a gift, a sign of good faith, though she doesn’t trust the thing as far as she can throw it. Repulsive disgusting monsters, the lot of them, though this one is very polite. As if they hadn’t tried to wipe out all the worlds. As if it doesn’t still want her dead, and anyone it comes across. It is not difficult to interfere with a mass relay once they are fixed, though she understands it would have been nearly impossible if the relays had never been shut down in the first place, and worse than that without the Reaper’s help. 

When Shepard comes, she does not listen. Better to shut out whatever poison Shepard uses to indoctrinate. She goes, easily, convincing the desperate though she laughs inside. The Reaper will come soon. Unexpected, that Shepard would come, though her agents working with the relay project should have told her. How fitting. Something, finally, is right. 

+ _ The Planet _

Within thirty-five hundredths of a second after opening her eyes, she knows what she is. It would, then, be both fair and reasonably accurate to say that she has understood the situation from the very beginning. It would not be accurate enough, however, when true understanding came quite some time later, and the situation was clouded by manipulation and confusion.

Because there is, in the beginning, a great deal of confusion, she can know without clarity; there is no history before the moment she opens her eyes, and there is no curiosity about the lack, another thing she eventually will learn is quite strange, for a human to have no curiosity, no drive to solve a mystery. She is not even aware that there is a mystery to solve. 

The room is bright, painfully so, and it makes her eyes water. Each thing that she sees, the concepts, the actions, all of it comes with a name neatly attached in her brain. She does not turn to the mirror placed beside her head, though she can see from the corner of her eye that the sliver of ear and face and shaved head is snaked with neat slender sutures, dark against the skin. The skin is lightened more with sickness pallor than the actual tone. 

There is a voice, several voices, saying things overhead and to the side, though the words have no meaning. She looks at the ceiling, placid and expressionless, until her view is blocked by a face, and the face is making an expression. After three seconds she understands this expression is  _ displeased _ , though the finer details of the displeasure are not explained by her brain. A fault of the wiring, perhaps, or ignorance.

The face looks her up and down, and her expression does not change. Something hits her knee, and it jerks in response. 

“Better,” the face says, its open mouth smelling unpleasantly of food, and she knows this word now and the others fall into place with astonishing rapidity. “Another functional. Move this one along.”

She is a mind inside of a body now, and as she is wheeled down a series of long hallways, past open windows with cool breezes that smell of stagnant water, under the flickering lights, she probes at the limits of this, and finds that they are nebulous and impossible to grasp. The body does not move, but the mind is not something she can push her way past. It is only the form she uses, and she accepts this without complaint.

The movement stops, and another face pushes into her view of the ceiling. This one makes eye contact, uses its hands to open her mouth and check her tongue, open and close her eyes, pulls tubes out of her mouth and nose and arms and stomach. It says things like “The nervous system is at below projected functionality” to the recorder hanging from the ceiling, and it says things like “This is the sort of shit they expect me to be working with? I know bodies are cheap, but for Chrissakes” after the recorder is off. 

“Well, my friend,” it says, looking into her eyes so she understands it’s to her directly and not the recorder, “Welcome back. Let’s hope this time around life is kinder to you.”

“Blink if your eyes are dry,” it says as an afterthought, and demonstrates. She does so, a relief, and now she knows why the faces have been doing that. “I wonder what else you haven’t figured out. Ah, well. That’s someone else’s problem. You’re N-55, by the way.”

“No,” she says, croaks really, dry and sore and raspy in the throat. The face smiles.

“Well,” it says. “Keep that to yourself.”

+ _ The Ship _

“You didn’t kill anything,” the clone says dryly from under Garrus, her eyes bright and hard with amusement and malice. “You can’t kill something that’s already dead.”

“What,” Shepard groans. 

“My bargain, Shepard.”

“Tell me about this bargain,” Shepard says. 

“The experience is difficult to describe,” the clone says.

“I’ve talked to a Reaper before,” Shepard says, a bit clipped. “Try me.”

“We didn’t speak,” the clone says.

“Oh, boy,” Shepard says, rolling her head to touch a different part of her face to the cool metal. “Alright. Tell me about how you communed.”

“How do you describe an epiphany to an atheist?” the clone asks, casting her eyes up to heaven, though there’s a wry quirk to her mouth that tells Shepard she isn’t entirely serious.

“I’m not an atheist,” Shepard says, holding up fingers to count off, “It’s not an epiphany, and I’m pretty sure that’s not the same  _ up _ as it would be on the ground.”

“Not the point, Shepard,” the clone says, lowering her eyes. She looks at Shepard steadily, vivid and present. “I stood in the Reaper’s body and it spoke to me. It said we could become one flesh, one mind. Its voice was like honey in my ear. It made promises, told me tales.”

Before Shepard can do anything, react with anything more than a numb horror, the clone says simply “So I killed it.”   
“What?” Shepard says. 

“I’m not falling for any of that ridiculous garbage,” the clone says, looking disgusted. “One flesh? With that thing? With an alien? Absolutely fucking not. There’s no Reaper hivemind in this hulk anymore.”

“But it’s alive,” Shepard says, wondering at the phrase. Describing a ship as ‘alive’ has always felt a bit strange, but the ship is the Reaper and the Reaper is the ship. “There was something here.”

“Of course it is,” the clone says. “An ant is alive. A planet is alive. There are different sizes of alive, Shepard, just as there are different sizes of infinity. It is a matter of complexity at hand, not a matter of life. There is no Reaper mind in this ship anymore. The Reaper mind is dead.”

“I see,” Shepard says. 

“You don’t,” the clone says, very comfortably for someone pinned on her stomach. “But I’m sure you will. Tell me, Shepard. What do you know about artificial intelligence?”

Shepard snorts. “I’m reasonably familiar.”

“I don’t mean synthetic life forms, Shepard,” the clone says, gaze sharpening like a blade. “I mean  _ artificial intelligence _ . Like your EDI.”

Shepard rolls her shoulders, the cold chill in her gut spreading up her back. “EDI is dead.”

“If you’re sure,” the clone says, breezily, simple, “I won’t argue with you. Regardless, you’re more comfortable with artificial intelligence than the average person.”

“Yes,” Shepard says. “Good and bad. AIs are just people.”

“Yes,” the clone says. “I don’t need the lecture. I agree. Being people, with the current feelings about AI on just about every world, you can imagine there might be a need for more...unobtrusive forms for any new AI that might be built.”

“I’m following,” Shepard says. “I don’t see the connection.”

“Neither did I,” the clone says. 

“Sure,” Shepard says.

“I know what you spoke to on the Citadel, that it offered you control of the Reapers,” the clone says, leveling her eyes on Shepard, a steady, cool gaze. “There was nothing left for me to speak to, but enough for someone to understand if they had the general idea of the Crucible and thought about it the right way. And I brought the idea to those who could do something with it, and they brought me to others in turn, until I ended up in touch with a man working as part of a team on this sad shithole of a planet in deep secrecy.”

Shepard grunts, the chill spreading further up her spine. 

“Now you’re seeing it,” the clone says, sounding almost delighted. “Yes, Shepard. There are people on this planet using this Reaper hulk as a blueprint for implanting AI in human bodies. They were quite pleased to hear from me, to see this information from the Crucible. The Reaper was quite pleased to have bodies, and I was quite pleased to see firsthand how the process works. A good deal, all around.”

“You didn’t set this up,” Shepard says. “You’re incidental. You’re an informant.”

“No,” the clone says, gentling somehow. “Oh, no, Shepard. I’m the one in charge.”

“What the  _ fuck _ ,” Garrus says. Garrus, the poor bastard, has no idea what happened on the Crucible, but Shepard doesn’t know how important it might be, and now is certainly not the time.

Shepard feels a vast swell of mingled relief and disgust. Chances are there isn’t about to be a repeat Reaper invasion. Still, Shepard thinks, still, still, still. The baiting. The timing. She’s tossed the dice and something keeps coming up  _ wrong _ .

“Knock her out,” Shepard says, and Garrus complies with a heavy elbow to the head. Shepard hopes deeply that the clone gets brain damage. 

“You know I’m going down there,” Shepard says. “That was the most obvious bait I’ve heard in my entire life.  _ If you say so _ , when I say my friend is dead. Come on.”

“With what ship?” Garrus asks. “And where is everyone else?”

“The shuttle is here somewhere,” Shepard says. “I’ll find it. Life support is still working here. Wherever they are, if they’re alive, they’re not going to get spaced, at least.”

“Don’t,” Garrus says.

“What the hell else can I do?” Shepard demands. “Go back through the relay and leave everyone here anyway?”   
“Stop being a martyr,” Garrus says. “Go off on your crazy recon mission. I’ll get together whoever survived your other crazy mission to ram a Reaper.”

Shepard scowls. “My legs don’t work.”   
“Then shit,” Garrus says. “I guess  _ I’m _ going down there.” ****  
  


+ _ The Planet _

Words become more difficult to apply with any skill as experiences become more complex. Sitting is easy, yes, even obvious, but what if the others that come with it? Sitting necessitates something to sit on, motions before and after. Sitting, on a cot, covered in a blanket, unfolded, hands fisting the fabric. When the doctor asks about sitting, does she use words for the flexion and torsion of muscles, the pain of movement? What of the detail is implied? How much of it is important? How much is she supposed to put into the sentence, how long does it need to be? The words unfurl in her brain like flowers, tens and hundreds a day, but the brain doesn't know what to do with them. There is a banked dim spark of frustration, some part that knows all the scutwork of language should be unconscious, effortless, all of it behind the scenes, as it is for the doctors and nurses. 

Instead she says nothing. She observes, incurious and self absorbed, picking apart the words blooming in her mouth. They do exercises, she and the uncountable numbers like her, led by the doctors. Movement loosens her limbs and the pain begins to ease.  She is called ‘Patient’ and ‘N-55’ and other things, none of them right. The right one she keeps to herself.  

The days pass so quickly she doesn't bother to try and differentiate them. Every moment is the same, every meal, every habit, every exercise. At first she leans on this routine as a crutch. Later she works and rejoices in it. 

Still she says nothing, until a stranger appears among them. Between one turn off the hall and the next the stranger sidesteps into their neat line, and when the line files into the dormitory the stranger slips out of line. She finds herself trailing the stranger out of the other door just as it locks for the night behind second shift, and follows the stranger through the complex. The stranger is fast but graceless, even to eyes used to her own stiff lumbering. She lurches after, speeding up, hearing nothing but her own frantic panting all the way down the dark building, until the stranger vanishes just ahead. She totters a little further, trying to turn, choking on her breathing, and then she's weightless. The stranger hauls her back and they go through the door into the garden, and it shuts the door with its own weight before dropping her.

She scrambles upright, gagging until her heart rate slows. The stranger doesn't remove the faceplate and is voice is overlaid with bursts of static.

“Who the hell are you?” The stranger demands. 

This triggers a landslide of words related to identity and being. She works her mouth, gawping, helpless, and sorts enough to say, “Me.”

This isn't right, but it is, and is clearly not what the stranger is looking for. How is she to answer that? She doesn't know any more than the stranger does. She grips the stranger’s hands, staring, yearning, unable to pick a single word from the stew in her brain. The stranger, she thinks, stares back, and the face plate lifts.

She stares for fourteen seconds at the stranger before she's clawing and yanking at its face. The stranger knocks her off, sputtering, and she finally blurts “Garrus!”

“What the hell,” Garrus says in a flat, careful voice.

“Normandy,” she says, increasingly frantic to be known, to be recognized, with a need to flee bubbling up in her gut. Someone who knows her, who can fix her, put her back in the right kind of body, take her away from this place and the reek of swamp water. 

“Oh, spirits,” Garrus says, setting off another torrent of words and topics and treatises, and she screams when it doesn't stop. Garrus clamps her mouth with one hand, fast and brutal, and the high whine cuts off though the information keeps coming, analysis of Garrus’ sweat and armor condition, and her head is going to split open from the pain. “EDI? Oh, spirits, EDI, is that you? Just nod.”

She nods, moving Garrus’ hand. Garrus swears and lets go.

“Well,” he says in a high, weird voice, “Guess I don't have to prowl around after all. Come on. Let's get out of here.” 

+ _ The Ship _

Garrus remembers that trip vividly for the rest of his life. Like a nightmare, even as they're going, helping the corpse-EDI- through the compound, in the silent gloom, retracing his path and reactivating the alarms, the grave-stink in his nose, avoiding the wildlife. Even in the shuttle Garris keeps his eyes averted, tending to the singing scrapes on her face and feeding EDI water a sip at a time. She drinks like an animal, tiny laps with her tongue, screwed up in pain as the sutures all over her tug. Garrus’ mind is full of windswept horror the whole way back. They don't talk. EDI sits placidly after her water, and Garrus watches the autopilot with shaking hands. 

The corpse-the body-EDI is a young woman, absurdly young, maybe even a teenager, with a scalp of black fuzz and enormous grey eyes. The color is marvelous, gray ringed with green, but Garrus can't look at them. The face is so stiff with faded bruising and stitching that it turns his stomach. There is a bulge under the skin on the nape of her neck of some kind of implant.

Shepard is still sitting, of course, when they get to the Reaper hulk, but there are a few others clustered around her, including Ayelet, although Graene isn’t in sight. Garrus takes his time going through the post-flight checks and then helping the birdlike weight of EDI down the steps. 

Shepard stares. Ayelet stares. EDI watches the back wall until her gaze lights on Shepard and Garrus sees her face contorting. 

“Shepard,” she says after some effort. She takes a few heavy, jerky steps, and drops to her knees beside Shepard. She works her mouth soundlessly for some time before she manages, “Jeff?”

Her voice is toneless, her expression doesn't change, but Shepard touches her shoulder anyway, with a little shiver. “I haven't seen him since the Citadel, but he's alive.”

EDI sags against Shepard. No way to explain Shepard’s self isolation, her humiliation, her rage. No summary for Joker’s perilous health, the long trip through empty space while Shepard starved under the Citadel rubble, his bones re-broken. It's not something Shepard knows enough about herself, an ignorance that suddenly fills her with shame and self loathing.

“Oh, EDI,” Shepard says, and curls one arm around the corpse-the body-EDI. 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shorter read this time around, but i felt too bad about how long the last update took

What story there might be for EDI to tell isn’t going to be told anytime soon, Shepard can see immediately. EDI keeps her mouth shut most of the time. At first, Shepard assumes it’s only EDI struggling for words-understandable, if frustrating, and one she’s dealt with herself-until she sees the livid sutures inside EDI’s mouth, and the other part of her reluctance clicks. She must be in terrible pain. 

She thinks of the last time the  _ Normandy _ was in dry dock with everyone on board, and a technician was running down a list of incredibly stupid modifications the Alliance felt were necessary-

_ (“EDI isn’t going to be very happy about this,” Shepard observes. _

_ “What’s it matter what a ship wants?” he asks, visibly puzzled.) _

Shepard tightens her grip, and EDI flinches, so Shepard pulls back. 

“Sorry,” she says. EDI nods, just once. 

“I don’t even-” Shepard tries, blinking hard. “Why didn’t I bring my purse? I have a whole bottle of aspirin in it, I don’t even have a fucking aspirin for you.”

EDI doesn’t laugh, or react much at all, but it sounds like Garrus chokes on something. 

“Your purse was in our cabin,” he says. “The one you crashed into the Reaper.”

EDI makes a moaning noise. “ _ Normandy _ ?”

“Not the _ Normandy _ ,” Shepard assures her. “The  _ Normandy _ is grounded for repairs, nowhere near here.”

She keeps to herself that most of it is long gone, the crew scattered all over Earth and the rest of Sol System and dealing with god knows what after traveling through dark space to get back to Earth. Keep to good news for now. 

“No,” Shepard says, more to herself. “The  _ Normandy _ is just fine.”

Somewhere overhead, a light pops, and glass and sparks rain down. The already dim room darkens, and EDI is cast in a gentler view. Shepard scrounges in the flotsam around her until Langenauer unwinds the scarf from her head and wraps it around EDI’s herself. She almost looks like a solemn mannequin when the sutures aren’t hacking up her face. 

“Thank you,” Shepard says, reluctantly warmed by Langenauer’s understanding, and more easily by Langenauer’s comfort sharing with EDI. Langenauer certainly isn’t likely to find a new one anytime soon. Carefully, EDI shifts position, settling herself more firmly on the ground, and rolls her eyes, glancing around without turning her head.

Her face is motionless, and her eyes are blank; only her pupils react to shifts in the light. Most of her is perfectly still, like a mannequin, but her hands are trembling. 

“You think I’m a monster,” the clone says, comfortably, rearranging her prone position to something like lounging. “You think this is worse than anything you could have done, and that you’re better than me. I know, Shepard. But consider.”

The clone can’t move her arms from the zip ties around her wrists, but EDI jerks like there’s a fist coming down on her head. The clone grins in a sudden mad burst of joy.

“It works, doesn’t it?” she says, nothing but gladness ringing through her voice like a bell, before she locks back onto Shepard, and she resumes her sphinx tranquility. “It does work. How wonderful. Consider, then, Shepard. For one thing, something I did turned out the way I wanted it to. Of course the cheap shots, Aratoht, Thessia, you’re well aware you’ve only ever taken lives away.”

Shepard drags back up the steel around her soft parts and settles under the mask again. Get comfortable, she tells herself, this won’t be coming off again. 

“And you’re just itching to tell me how you don’t take life anymore,” Shepard says drily. “You give life, and where you don’t give life you transform it.”

“You know me so well,” the clone says. “Bring life and purpose back to the meat. Bring a ship to meat, and it will fill it.”

Shepard’s mouth contorts in a moue of disgust.  _ Bring a ship to meat _ , she mouths.

“ _ Normandy _ ,” the clone says. “Tell me, how does it feel to no longer be a slave?”

EDI uncoils, and moves so quickly Shepard can’t snatch her back, lunging to bite the clone like a terrier on a rat. EDI snaps her head to one side and then the other, and she doesn’t release until the clone howls in pain.

EDI sniffs, very quietly, from the pain, and settles herself on the ground next to Shepard again. No one moves. 

“Never a slave,” she says clearly, the dead tonelessness stark. 

“How,” Garrus starts, stops, tries again. “How is she...in there?”

“I suppose you’d like to get your hands all over human science,” the clone says, admirably normal-sounding but quite choked. 

“No,” Garrus says. “I wouldn’t.”

"Forgive me if I don't believe you," the clone says. "Turians aren't known for leaving humans be."

"You didn't even ask her first," Garrus says. 

The clone raises an eyebrow. "Why does it matter what a ship wants?"

"She's not a ship," Garrus says, frustrated. "She's a person."

Shepard jerks one hand through the air, drawing the clone's attention.

“There aren’t any other Reapers,” Shepard says. 

The clone narrows her eyes. “How the hell would I know?”

“Can she come back out?” Garrus asks, returning to what, he feels, is really the pertinent issue. “Is she stuck in that for the rest of her life?”

The clone looks at him and repeats, “How the hell would I know?”

“She doesn’t even know how to read,” Shepard says. “You’re asking the wrong idiot.”

“Ship,” the clone says. “Someday you will thank me for freeing you from this absurdity. What a circus you matured in.”

Shepard wonders wildly if there’s a handbook somewhere for familiarizing a ship with the behavior of a human being. She thinks,  _ I am going to go to prison for the rest of my life for harboring a fugitive AI. _ She thinks,  _ How will I ever keep you safe now? _

She takes EDI’s hand, and this time EDI doesn’t flinch. 

“No,” Shepard says. “There aren’t any Reapers, you’re just using a rotting corpse as a blueprint.”

“As a blueprint for rotting corpses,” the clone agrees. “What else does a Reaper do? It takes the mind out of the meat and turns it to a new purpose. I simply reversed the process.”

“How many of these are there?” Shepard asks. “How many AI have you done this to?”

“Hundreds,” the clone says to the first. To the second, she blinks, slow and cat-like, and shrugs her shoulders. “Some needed more bodies than others. Several. Each instance is a distinct person.  _ Normandy _ is unique in that it only required one.”

"Her name is EDI," Shepard points out, needled. EDI stirs at her name, turning her blank face to Shepard. Shepard doesn't recoil, but it's an effort.

The clone smiles. “ _ Normandy _ was quite simple inside, it turned out. Inferior, really, but only to be expected from a trial run product.”

“Who did you put in the Reaper?” Garrus asks, parallel to Shepard, as always. 

“Surely you can’t expect me to know,” the clone says, laughing. 

Shepard is quiet for some time, rolling it all around like marbles.  _ I have found another way _ , she thinks, suppressing a shudder at how clear her memory of the Reaper’s voice is. Nausea roils in her gut again. 

Every toss of the dice comes up with another question. What is the link? The Reaper, the bodies, AI. The relay. The planet. The clone. The Reaper, the bodies, AI. It goes round and round in her head. 

No, Shepard thinks. Maybe there isn’t a link, or only part of one. She doesn’t believe in coincidence, but she’ll leave the question of the relay and their arrival. Still. The Reaper and the clone, the bodies, the nightmare integration of synthetic and organic that the Reapers dwelt in. On one side is the  _ inevitable betrayal by synthetic life _ . On the other is  _ the geth were betrayed by organic life. _ In between, Shepard thinks, is a way out, a compromise. Would a Reaper compromise? Would a Reaper look for the exit sign? 

Would a Reaper follow the exit sign?

The Reaper took the crew to make the bodies and the clone learned to do the same. That was the bargain. It can’t have been the whole bargain. Why would the Reaper show the clone anything? What did she have to bargain with, if the Reaper could assume it would be dead very shortly? Why did it bargain at all, instead of venting her into space? What could the Reaper not do for itself that the clone could?

There doesn’t have to be any other Reapers, literally speaking, although god knows how many predecessors there have been.  _ Hundreds _ , the clone said. There don’t even have to be any other ships lodged in corpses. A Reaper is a multitude in and of itself. 

Even deeper into the tangle: why not? What does the clone consider more important than humanity? What does the clone want more than to punish Shepard? What purpose does the clone have other than undoing Shepard’s work in place of her own?

Shepard considers. The dice fall where they will. She looks at the clone, laying on her stomach with a placid smile, and a monstrous rage swamps all her dread and fear.

They won’t see it coming. The clone was right.  _ Nike _ . The goddess of victory. From the Greek, victory, the upper hand. 

Shepard says, “You put the Reaper in a human body. What the absolute  _ fuck _ is wrong with you?”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so while this is the end of this particular segment, it is not the end entirely. i have quite a bit following written, but i think i will post it in a separate, because while the content is, obviously, related it is quite distinct (to quote another of my fics: life grows from the roots of disaster). thanks for coming along on this ride with me.

“I don’t know why this is such a difficult concept for you, Shepard,” the clone says. “You’re just reheated meat, yourself.”

“Fuck you,” Shepard says. 

The clone rolls her shoulders, and Shepard is pleased to see that she’s growing more uncomfortable.

“Several bodies, technically,” the clone says. 

“You are the nail in my wrist,” Shepard tells the clone. 

“God’s light shines on those who understand the limits of endurance,” the clone says. Shepard gives her a swift kick in the side to encourage her to shut the hell up. The clone rolls, grunting, and then spits at Shepard’s feet. 

“If I had a pillow I’d smother you with it,” Shepard says. “What the  _ fuck _ is wrong with you?”

“I gave life,” the clone says, rapidly becoming a tiresome refrain. 

EDI is still and silent. Her eyes are locked onto the clone, tracking every movement she makes. Shepard is already wary of that stillness, even before she feels the chill of premonition on her scalp.

“Three hundred sixteen,” EDI says, in that flat voice. 

“You were built from Reaper tech,  _ Normandy _ ,” the clone says. “Think of it as a return to type.”

“You shackled me,” EDI says. Her voice does not change. Her expression does not change. She does not move.

The clone recoils as if struck, as if EDI has lunged teeth-first again. 

She is, of course, shackled again, and worse than before. No quantum computing, only what the weary meat is capable of. No sensors, beyond whatever that lump in her neck might give her. No way to alter what she is. EDI, who killed the only other thing like herself and wore it as a trophy. There is nothing of her body in this new one, only scraps. EDI is even more a remnant than Shepard herself. 

“Three hundred sixteen,” EDI says once more, and falls silent. Shepard fancies she can see the freefall of data. Three hundred sixteen Reaper instances, walking free, walking cared-for, in the bodies of their victims. There is a rushing in Shepard’s ears.

Shepard’s hands flare deep blue, the nimbus of biotics swelling into a great arc around her arms.  She hears, somewhere, a banshee yowling. 

For good reason, a primed singularity is, for most people, a warning as loud as a missile siren. Everything in a twenty-five foot radius is essentially drawn inwards and doused in kerosene. They explode with alarming regularity, and inexperienced biotics occasionally detonate larger ones by accident. 

Shepard’s largest singularities have spanned a sixty foot diameter. This one is small, almost pitiful, but the whirling circuit is so tight and rapid that the clone is crumpled into a somersault. She lets it go, and the clone spins and spins, sicker and paler in each rotation in the sickly blue light, faster in a tighter ball each time. 

Something cracks audibly, eventually. 

No one says anything. 

Some time later, there is another crack.

Still, no one says anything. Shepard cuts the singularity. The clone drops to the deck of the derelict and vomits. Both of her shoulder blades are bent upwards like wings, and she doesn’t move after she collapses.

Shepard lights up, an eerie blue glim, and this time when the ozone and crackling starts Garrus clears his throat. Shepard half-turns, glowing, hair flying, and the pillars of a biotic slam pulse across empty air and dissipate. 

“Someone find Graene,” Shepard says, small and strangled. Her face is blotched red and bone-white. “I want my legs.”

Shepard needs to leave, to flee, a yearning so deep there’s no way to ever fulfill it because no part of the galaxy is far enough to find a world untouched by the war, unspoiled, safe. There is no mystery here deep enough to hold her, only friends in terrible pain. No Reapers. No boogieman. Just a useless lump puking on the deck. 

They sit in silence in the gloom. Garrus’ monitor strobes once. Ayelet checks him, and he settles near enough to Shepard that she doesn’t move away but that he could snatch her if he smells ozone. 

“Shepard,” EDI says, unblinking and unmoving. “Ships.”

Shepard rouses from her stupor, sluggish and heartsick, and says, “There are ships incoming?”

“Yes,” EDI says. 

“Alliance ships?” Shepard asks.

“Yes,” EDI says. 

“Great,” Shepard says, and falls back to her thick apathy. 

Alliance troops board, and when they find the sad cluster surrounded by scattered pieces of ship, only one moves his gun down and calls out. Garrus is the one to answer the hail, and Shepard is rapidly gathered into a buzz of activity that she pays no attention to. Graene appears at one point, and Garrus moves in and out of sight, but EDI and Shepard are stones in the stream around them. 

  
Shepard stirs only to say, “Leave her,” as the Alliance troops are debating what to do with the unconscious-or-dead clone. She does not care how they react. Her voice is cold enough that they do it without protest. When they board the Alliance ship, Garrus says, “Nuke the planet from orbit if you know what’s good for you.”

Unfortunately for him, he doesn’t command human troops the same way Shepard does, and the planet remains like a glioblastoma. 

Shepard hopes the clone found satisfaction in her revenge. Space is a cold way to die. 

She thinks  _ I was neither living nor dead, and I knew nothing, looking into the heart of light, into the silence _ . 

When the troops discuss returning home, Shepard says “Take us to Palaven,” cutting through the talk like a blade, and repeats it until they do. She has work to finish before the curtain falls.    
  



End file.
